Random Thoughts From The Queen of Scrap

Goin' out in a blaze of glory....

2007-01-12T08:56:00.000-06:00

Well as my last hurrah with Blogger, I made the switch from the old blogger to the new-whatever-they-have-now-since-it's-not-beta system. It could be kinda cool. Seems to be a lot of cool options. However,

I've decided I'm going to be happy with LJ for now. I'll keep this Blogger blog for a while, just in case, but don't look for many more updates here.

So now I'm here:

Random Thoughts Running Through My Head

So be sure to change your links. Oh, and leave me comments at LJ so I know you've been by. I think you may have to sign your name, especially if you don't have a LJ blog, so I know who ya are.

This may be my final post here...

2007-01-02T22:45:00.000-06:00

I'm working on changing my blog....I've followed Denise over to LiveJournal to see if it's more user friendly. While it's a little more complicated, at least it seems it to me, I haven't had problems uploading photos and that's a very nice change. So if you wanna check it out, I'm now found here:

http://rebekahboo2.livejournal.com/

It may or may not be a permanent move. I guess you'll figure it out by checking both places for a while.

Thanks everyone that commented here. I hope it won't be too much of a problem to read me at LJ. Please check it out and leave me your feedback in the comments section.

The Last Working Day Before Christmas

2006-12-22T08:29:00.000-06:00

That would be today. Yeah, I have to work. But it should be a fairly easy day - work till about 10:30/11:00, party for a bit then go home. I'm hoping to be home by 2:00 at the latest. We'll see how that goes though.

Christmas Check List~
I'm pretty much ready for Christmas. I have a couple stocking stuffers to buy for Mike yet and then I gotta get all the wrapping done. I also have to do the grocery shopping today and then make a few sweet treats for the weekend. Once that is done the house will need a complete cleaning. The boys are at home today supposedly cleaning - yeah right! I told them I wanted their rooms clean when I got home. I'm sure that won't happen but it's worth a shot.

For my, most likely, last post before Christmas, I would like to wish you all a Very Merry Christmas & a blessed New Year. May the Lord pour out his blessings on you this coming year.

He is the Reason for the Season.

Altered Puzzle

2006-12-20T10:23:00.000-06:00

Ever have one of those things that just make you smile? Well, this is one of those things. It started out as a wild-hair idea and ended up a really cool piece of art.

Earlier this year I participated in a CJ with some ladies at SJ. I wanted to do something unique with it so I had them help me alter a puzzle. (Here is my original blog post about it.)

I wanted it to be for a wall in my scrapspace. So, I sent the 2 center pieces painted the color of my wall, altered 2 of my own and packaged the whole thing up, minus the frame, and sent it along with my CJ. This past weekend it was finally completed and returned to me and this is what I got:

I am so loving it. I still need to alter the 2 pices not touched by the CJ ladies and the 2 center pieces and then figure out the best way to display it and it'll be done. But when I look at it, it definitely makes me smile.

Thank you Summer Jazz Journal ladies.

I can't believe that Christmas is just 5 short days away. It really has snuck up on me this year. Excep for a few stocking stuffers for Mike I am done shopping for gifts. I do need to do the grocery shopping yet but I don't have my list together yet - gotta do that first.

I feel so thrifty this year, making a lot of presents. I don't know if I actually saved any money or not, but I did use some of my scrapping stash to make some of the things so I guess that counts.

Gotta get back to work. Peace out!

Christmas Carols for the Psychologically Challenged

2006-12-19T14:05:00.000-06:00

1. Schizophrenia --- Do You Hear What I Hear?
2. Amnesia --- I Don't Know if I'll be Home for Christmas
3. Narcissistic --- Hark the Herald Angels Sing About Me
4. Manic --- Deck the Halls and Walls and House and Lawn and Streets and Stores and Office and Town and Cars and Buses and Trucks and Trees and Fire Hydrants and ...
5. Paranoid --- Santa Claus is Coming to Get Me
6. Borderline Personality Disorder --- Thoughts of Roasting on an Open Fire
7. Full Personality Disorder ---You Better Watch Out, I'm Gonna Cry, I'm Gonna Pout, Maybe I'll tell You Why
8. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder --- Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells....
9 Agoraphobia --- I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day But Wouldn't Leave My House
10. Senile Dementia --- Walking in a Winter Wonderland Miles From My House In My Slippers and Robe
10. Oppositional Defiant Disorder --- I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus So I Burned Down the House
11. Social Anxiety Disorder --- Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas -- While I Sit Here and Hyperventilate.

I got that from my friend V, who got it from her friend's blog. Thought I would share.

Let's see....moving on to the Weekend.....
Whew, is about all I can say. We've had an amazingly busy weekend. Friday night Mike and I got to go out for dinner at J Buck's. We both ordered the Filet mingnon - it was delicious. From there we went inside the mall. We were like tourists....gawking at everything. We haven't been there in ages and the freaks are even freakier. Didn't get a whole lot of shopping done, but I managed to pick up a couple things for Nick, which was the purpose of going out there.

Went home and threw some laundry in the washer then sat down to work on some more scrapping projectes. This week/weekend I managed to finish 6 Christmas cards, 24 altered Hershey Bars, final touches to the clothes pins for the teachers. I also managed to do more than one load of laundry, dishes, 2 rehersals for christmas program, get some costumes together for said program, wrapped my gifts for my CMK Secret Santa, oh, I'm sure I'm missing something. I just know I was exhausted when the weekend was finally over.

Andrea did a really great job of decorating the church for the program, as usual. Afterwards we took some family pictures. This is the best one, although I'm not thrilled with it, I love the ones of the twins. I'm going to see if I can get one of Nick by himself before it all comes down next Sunday. He wasn't wanting to be a "poser".

Guess that'll do it.

Brief Thursday 13

2006-12-14T14:35:00.000-06:00

1. Stale (thanks for the reminder Denise)
2. Headache (what I've been getting everyday after lunch.)
3. Sleepy (I sleep all night long but don't wake up feeling rested.)
4. Overworked (work, church, home, youth)
5. Cards (Need to make cards for my SS and 2 school teachers)
6. Scrapbooking (what I wish I was doing right now)
7. Cartridges (for the Cricut - what I want for Christmas)
8. Time (what I'm short of)
9. Clothes (what I really need)
10. Shopping (for Christmas pressies)
11. Practice (what I'm missing tonight to go to Nick's program)
12. CellPhone (yeah, that's one word. I got a new nifty one on Tuesday)
13. Cookies (what I want to bake tonight but don't know if I'll get the chance, see #11)

My Birthday was Tuesday and we went to dinner at Houlihan's. It was very yummy. I enjoyed my fajitas. Here are a couple from the restaurant.

This was the ceiling dome over our table. I thought it was pretty with the ornaments hanging down but the pic doesn't do it justice.

Happy Holidays!!!!

2006-12-08T13:13:00.000-06:00

We got our power back on Monday evening about 9:00. We were out for 96 hours, but who's counting. LOL I was just so thankful to have my house back. I could have kissed the linemen working that night, I was just so happy.

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Our church has a newsletter that is put out quarterly. For the first time, I was asked to write something for it. I was supposed to write a couple sentences about my favorite Christmas memory and since I had to take the time to write it anyway, I figured I would share with ya'll.

I don’t really have a memory of one specific Christmas. I guess I just lump them together so that my favorite memory of Christmas is "tradition." Every year on Christmas night, we gather all the kids and adults together and someone reads the Christmas story. We take time to reflect on Jesus – the Reason for the Season – and past Christmases remembering loved one’s who have gone "home" and be thankful for another year together.

PPPPPPPPPP

I skipped the T13 again. I just can't stand the pressure of doing that every week. So no more apology's - if I do it, I do it. If I don't, I don't. *whew* that was liberating. LOL

Tonight I have to meet a girl at 7 to practice for our Christmas program. After that the rest of the night, what's left of it, is mine. I hope to get a little scrapping done maybe tonight. No major expectations though.

As for the rest of the weekend....Tomorrow we are moving my FIL. He's getting out of the house in the crack, getto neighborhood and moving to a safer environment. I'm really glad about that but it's been hard for him to pack up his belongings and get rid of stuff. He's a collector - of junk - and he's moving from 20+ years in his home to a 2 bedroom apartment. *sigh* He's also beyond the stage of wanting to make decisions about new things. The routine is fine, but don't ask him to change anything...he don't want to deal with it. He's still fully able to, he would rather not. And then Sunday is church with some additional Christmas Program practice times thrown in. Yuck!!!

Have a great weekend!

A little update...

2006-12-03T16:53:00.000-06:00

Not really good news to share yet - We are still without power. I'm really getting tired of sleeping on the floor. It's not so much fun anymore. There's no sign on the power company's web site when it may be up yet. *sigh* If it lasts much longer we may borrow a generator and a couple kerosene heaters and try and stay in our own place. Not totally certain yet.

Got this in an email...thought it was kind of fun.

Welcome to the Christmas edition of getting to know your friends. 'Tis
the Season to be NICE!
1. Wrapping paper or gift bags? Wrapping paper
2. Real tree or artificial? Artificial tree
3. When do you put up the tree? Thanksgiving weekend - generally the day after.
4. When do you take the tree down? After New Year's
5. Do you like eggnog? Yes, in small doses.
6. Favorite gift received as a child? I loved Christmas. I can't name my fav...don't remember.
7. Do you have a nativity scene? Yes
8. Hardest person to buy for? Mike
9. Easiest person to buy for? Twins
10. Mail or email Christmas cards? mail
11. Worst Christmas gift you ever received? I really don't remember getting anything I didn't like.
12. Favorite Christmas Movie? White Christmas - Bing Crosby
13. When do you start shopping for Christmas? Not in February - LOL. Usually around October or so
14. Have you ever recycled a Christmas present? Yes
15. Favorite thing to eat at Christmas? Pumpkin Pie
16. Clear lights or colored on the tree? Clear
17. Favorite Christmas song? I'll Be Home For Christmas
18. Travel at Christmas or stay home? When my grandparents were alive, it was best to go to their house, now everyone comes to mine.
19. Can you name all of Santa's reindeers? Yes
20. Angel on the tree top or a star? Angel
21. Open the presents Christmas Eve or morning? Christmas Eve
22. Most annoying thing about this time of year? traffic
23. Do you have Jesus in your heart this Christmas? Yes all the time!
24. Favorite Christmas Tradition? Being together with my family
25. Outdoor decorations? I love houses that are all blinged out, but I don't have it myself.

Gotta leave for church now. Talk To Ya Later.

Walkin' In A Winter Wonderland

2006-12-02T00:32:00.000-06:00

That's my favorite from today.

I guess it's only fitting that the first day of December look like this...

The first picture is from one street over from us, the second pic is the alley behind our house.

We are out of power - have been since 8:45 Thursday night. Our house is pretty cold, tonight Mike could actually see his breath in our bedroom, so we decided to sleep at my mom's house.

Her house could quite possibly qualify as a "shelter" since there are the 5 of us, my mom, my aunt, my cousin and her 2 kids, my mom's dog and our dog (Rocky is like a small horse). The funny thing is she has a double-wide trailer. Ah well, at least it's warm. It's like a party.

YEA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2006-11-29T10:28:00.000-06:00

I brought my memory stick today, so I can share pictures. Only a couple but hey, it's better than nothing.

The Cocoa Beach LO is a few of my favorite pics from our first trip to Florida in 2005. I journaled on the back of it about our room fiasco at the second hotel we stayed at and the time share tours we had to take. It's info I wanted to remember but it didn't really add to the LO and it was too long (takes up the entire back of the LO)to hide somewhere on the front.

Here is the tree in the living room. I took the pic this morning before it got real light out. Love how it turned out.

Well, regarding my goal list from yesterday....yeah, didn't happen.

Goals for tonight:
Finish my SS project for CMK. I really need to finialize what
stuff I'm sending her too. I guled on 3 brads...woo. Not gonna get done at this speed.
I have to make a card for SS. Didn't get near my scrap table.
Put up Christmas tree in the basement. The guys, including Mike, took over the basement and played a game called Scene It Sports Edition, I think.
Get a little fun scrapping in. See above answer.
Get the boys (all 3 of them) to clean their rooms and hopefully locate the house key the twins lost...*sigh* Well, this didn't even get close to happening. Still missing the house key.
Laundry...twins need socks and I am getting close to needing the tidy-whitey's. Um, well Nick found some whites in the dryer, so I didn't have to do laundry... Yet

I did get one thing done though - but it wasn't on my list of things to-do. Mom came over and ate dinner with us so she could show us her new set of wheels - which are very nice I might add. When dinner was over & Mike took over the basement Mom and & I set up my blanket project on the kitchen table. We finished one blanket last night. It didn't take very long at all with both of us working on it. I got the idea from V (my online chat buddy) to make a fleece tie blanket. On Black Friday I got the material to make 4 of them. This one has sports balls on it and has a green background. So I bought a funky brown to match it for the reverse side. It turned out really cute. I am very excited about the rest of them now. I sent it home with my mom to show Chelle, who helped me pick out the material. Now Chelle wants to make one. I didn't get a picture before Mom took it. I'll probably wait and do one of all 4 together.

I found out this morning that my FIL is signing the lease to his apartment tomorrow. He was very upset this morning about leaving his home and going to a new place with no memories. It killed me when he said he wished he had a mother or father right about now. He started tearing up, which Jack don't do very often, and that did it. I called Mike and had him call his brothers and sisters so we can all go over there on Friday and come up with a plan to help him move. Poor guy. So many memories are in his home and he's going to have to leave them.

Guess that'll do it for today. Getting ready to go to lunch soon.

Photos

2006-11-28T14:57:00.000-06:00

Argh...I was on my way to work this morning when I realized I forgot the memory card from my camera to upload some pics today. Soooo, maybe tomorrow.

My mom bought a new mini-van. Well, new to her. Picked it up today. It's a 2006 Chrysler with very few miles on it, must have been a test drive car or something. She's so excited. Every time she borrows our van she talks about how nice it drives and how it's so nice to sit high up so you can see, etc. The other day she was saying that the repairs on her car were going to run her over $2,000. I said why don't you just trade it in. And so that's what she did. I hopt I get to see it tonight.

I've been tagged by Denise to complete a book survey. I haven't read a book in so long and I have such a terrible memory that I don't think I could even complete it. Sorry Chicka. I will tell you about the last book I attempted to read. It was called Tribulation and it was like tribulaton trying to read it. I don't even know who wrote it but I just couldn't do it - not even through the second chapter. That reminds me, I need to return it to Gary.

Goals for tonight:
Finish my SS project for CMK. I really need to finialize what stuff I'm sending her too.
I have to make a card for SS.
Put up Christmas tree in the basement.
Get a little fun scrapping in.
Get the boys (all 3 of them) to clean their rooms and hopefully locate the house key the twins lost...*sigh*
Laundry...twins need socks and I am getting close to needing the tidy-whitey's

Speaking of scrapping, I have some LO's I need to photograph and get up here. Been using my new bug. Lovin' the Cricut. I've kinda been stumped in my scrapping. I have gobs of pictures but none of them are amazing photos. They are just events. I really want to scrap them and get the events documented but the pictures don't call to me. Ever since I went digital I find that I don't print as many pictures. That results in not having a lot of current things around to scrap, which saps my MoJ0. Maybe I should try to get one of the events I have from last year scrapped tonight - ahhh, my own personal challenge.

Peace out, ya'll.

2006-11-27T16:22:00.000-06:00

The status of my health has been questioned (thanks Denise) so I wanted to be sure to check in today to let you all know that I am alive and well. I have been so swamped that I haven’t even spent much time at my favorite web site. Now, you know that’s busy!!!! The rundown goes like this….

Last Wednesday, the 22nd, I was merrily working away here at the office. Co-worker wasn’t in – she went on vacation for the second time in the entire 6 years she’s been here. I had some work and was taking my time with it since I figured that would have to last me all day. I was also working on my Thursday 13 (in a Word document just in case blogger got a wild hair) about things I was thankful for.

About 11:15 the boss started laying things on my desk telling me what to do with them. At 11:30, they left for lunch and told me to change the answering machine and that I could go for the day. I was thinking earlier that morning that they would probably tell me around 4ish that I could go home. So I abandoned my TT and got out of Dodge, so to speak.

Went home and cooked a turkey for a family at our church. The wife has cancer and some of the church made the fixin’s for turkey dinner for her family. Mike and I fixed a cheese ball and made some cookies and I got my turkey ready to go in the oven. I set my alarm for 3:30 a.m. and all I had to do was turn the oven on and put the turkey in so I wasn’t up for hours or anything. The smell of it woke me up about 8 though. Smelled yummy!!!

Lets see….Thursday was spent at my aunts. Had a wonderful day with family just being lazy and chatting with my cousins. Mike and I continue to rule the Cranium board. WOO HOO!!!!!

Friday, we rolled out of bed around 10:00 (I did want to get up and hit the early bird sales but I was too tired). I got several things that I really wanted though – so I would say it was a successful day.

Saturday morning we took some kids from our youth group – 24 of them – to the mall. They were great and I got a couple more items on my shopping list. That night I put up the Christmas tree in the living room. I had to rearrange the room of course, but it went up fairly quick.

Sunday, was church all day and that brings us to today. Been busy at work coming off the holiday. On top of that my boss is going to be out of the office tomorrow he wanted to be caught up with tomorrow’s diary before he left today.

This coming week should be pretty busy too – Monday through Friday is prayer meeting, more Christmas tree set up, church, sign language and choir practice.

Here’s my incomplete 13 things I’m thankful for:

1) Most importantly, I am so thankful for Jesus and His unconditional love. He is my peace, provider, joy, salvation and so much more. I can’t imagine my life without Him. My relationship with Him means more to me everyday.

2) I thank God for my husband. He is more wonderful than I could ever have hoped for. I so totally do not deserve him.

3) I am thankful for my boys. They light up our house with so much joy. What fun we have together. When they are old with families of their own, I hope they remember the great times we’ve had. That they reminisce with lots of laughter about "back in the day..."

4) Even though I don’t like the fact that I have to work (since I really wanna be a SAHM), I am thankful that I have a job to go to. There are many people I see on the streets that are begging for a little change and it does make me thankful that I have income and am able to help provide for our family.

5) I am thankful for my senses. I fear loosing my vision. Not that I am having problems with my eyes, but my favorite Aunt lost her vision due to diabetes. That left an impression on me. I am thankful that I can see the beauty around me, my children’s faces, my husband, etc.

6) I am thankful for my friends. How fun it is to have them.

7) I am thankful for my country and the freedom I have to do as I please.

Now that the serious stuff is out of the way…

8) I am thankful for chocolate. That is one truly happy food. Hot Fudge, Dark Chocolate, White Chocolate, regular Chocolate, etc….

9) And then there’s Diet Coke. I crave that stuff.

That's as far as I got. I know I thought of some other things over the weekend but now I can't remember them. I hope to post some pictures tomorrow if I can remember to bring them to work.

Cooking Your Thanksgiving Turkey

2006-11-17T09:13:00.000-06:00

Is there anyone out there who’s cooking her very first turkey dinner? Are you not quite sure how to tell when that bad boy is cooked, but not dried out? Give this recipe a try:

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
Brush 10-14 lb. turkey with melted butter, salt and pepper.
Stuff cavity with 4 cups stuffing and 1 cup uncooked popcorn.
Place in baking pan with neck facing towards the back of the oven.
Listen for the popping sounds.
When the turkey’s rear-end blows the oven door open and the turkey flies across the room, it’s done.
Perfect turkey every time!

BBBWWWWWHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sorry I just had to do it......I got that from Becky at PageMaps and thought it was too funny not to share.

Actually I make a really good turkey. I made my first one last year and it turned out delish!!! I used those amazing cooking bags to cook mine in. Step 1 - Rub butter between the skin and the meat. Ok, so with butter anything can turn out good. Step 2 - Cut 2 oranges in half and squeeze them inside the bird. Leave them inside to cook inside the turkey. You can also put an onion inside too if you wish. Step 3 - tie the bag up and cook the bird UPSIDE DOWN. That's the key. I don't care if your grandma told ya not to - try it. It keeps the meat really moist cause you're cooking it in the juice. I don't remember cooking times and heat. I think it's printed on the directions that come with your bird. I think it may have to cook just a little longer since you have it upside down. Can't remember that either.

Man it sure was yummy. We had 2 turkeys last year - one made by me and the other by my aunt. Mine was gone sooooo fast. I was disappointed there were no leftovers to bring home. So there's ya a tried and true Turkey recipe.

Alright, I realize I missed the Thursday 13 yesterday. I just didn't feel like coming up with a list. It was just too much pressure to deal with. LOL Maybe next time.

I am so glad today is Friday. It's been a really nice week but I'm just ready for it to be over and get in the weekend. Tonight I'm getting together with my friend to iron out some more of the details of our crop in January. We decided we better get our ducks in a row before the holidays hit. If we wait, we'll be a wreck trying to pull it all together in time. I've had a lot of interest but so far nobody has actually signed up. I know people like to wait till the last minute for stuff like this, at least if you're like me you do, but I was thinking they could sign up before the holiday money starts coming out of the bank. Oh well, I feel pretty confident that we'll have a good turnout.

Oh, I need to say that God has really taken care of the situation that I posted about the other day in my cryptic blog. We found favor with these people and it is all working out just fine. Thank you all for praying - it could have turned out very bad for us.

Ok, Cami left me a comment the other day about photos of my LO's. Cami, I am stitching challenged. I am totally unable to understand my compter software to do that. At one point I tried to do it, but my files would end up so huge I couldn't upload anywhere. I have a lovely Dell color printer and scanner combo....but I don't have a driver for my Mac. I'm going to have to get a new one that will work with the Mac so for now, I'm stuck with bad photography I guess.

Have a great weekend everyone. Don't forget to get them turkeys out to defrost!

Cryptic blog post

2006-11-13T16:09:00.000-06:00

God is amazing!!!! It never ceases to amaze me how he cares about me. He has the whole universe to take care of, yet when I have a problem, He knows about it and cares enough to
orchestrate events to prove to me that He's listening and working on my behalf. Sometimes I don't take things to Him in prayer because I feel so insignificant in the scheme of all He has to do. And yet, even then, He knows and cares. This past week, Mike and I began a new trial. I have had fear about it and it's totally taking away my peace. I keep trying to give it to God but the worry creeps back in. (Yeah, that's the cryptic part of today's post since I'm not going to tell ya any more than that.)

Yesterday our pastor spoke on giving things to God and how we need to have faith that He will take care of our situations in the right time. The woman in the Bible that touched the hem of his garment didn't even touch Him or talk to Him to have her miracle done. She had enough faith that His hem healed her.

Last night we had a visiting minister and he spoke about Job. How at the end of that book, the second to the last verse starts with "After this..." There is an "AFTER" which means the tribulation/trial ends. I was given a word that things would work out for our good. I feel so much more peace about the whole situation. I just need to have faith in Him.

Thank you God for hearing me and caring for me.

Soooo, I had a great weekend. I got my house cleaned, went grocery shopping, I got some scrapping in, and had a girlfriend over and played cards.

OHMYGOSHOHMYGOSHOHMYGOSHOHMYGOSHOHMYGOSH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I got a cricut and I am sooo in love with it. I played with it a little over the weekend - did a couple very simple layouts with it. I am for sure wanting more catridges. I am already seeing this will be a necessity. I know I'll have to wait a while though, they are expensive and I've already gotten a lot with just getting the machine. Sooo, the next one on my list is Jasmine...I think I would get a lot of use out of that one.

This one of Gracie - just love how it turned out. I got that goofy paper as a freebie in a magazine last year sometime. I never thought I would use it - it's just too bright. But it goes perfect with her little carseat do-dads. The flowers are cut by my cricut.

I wish I could figure out a way to get decent photos of my layouts while in my house. I don't always have the opportunity to get photos during the day so I have to get them in the evening inside. I end up with distorted colors or glares on my photos. UGH!!!

Have a great evening everyone.

A Lame Thursday 13...

2006-11-09T15:20:00.000-06:00

1) I have put off doing this crazy 13 today cause I didn't have anything to say. So you are going to get randomness.

2) Today's weather is absolutely gorgeous. It is about 77 degrees out and the sun is shining!!! Love days like this. I was talking with my mom about it and we were saying how thankful we were after having so much dreary weather lately. The really sad thing is, winter hasn't really hit us yet. Imagine how we'll be feeling by next month.

3) Austen & I ended up having bronchitis. Did I post that already? Can't remember. Anyway we are both on antibiotics. Mine are literally ginormous HOT PINK pills and they smell like banana or something. They also make me ravenous. So I fell like I'm eating everything in sight.

4) We're working on Christmas stuff at church. I'll be working with the Sign language team - can't wait to get that started.

5) I have stayed off of the quick cuts and sizzix trends. I was fine without them. I always realted them to little shapes and not letters. Well for some reason the bug hit me - I want a Cricut so bad. I showed Mike one day while at Michaels and he keeps looking at them if I drag him in there. He even notices them in sale papers. Sooooo, my IM buddy V and I were talking one day and she hooked me up with a lady that sells them cheaper than anyone else (sale or no sale). I talked to Mike and he said I could order it. It's my birthday and Christmas all in one - and I can live with that. I'm so excited. I should have that hot little machine in my hands by the weekend. EXCITING!!!!!

6) Shoot, this is only 6????? I can't do many more.

7) I'm sending out the email for the crop today or first thing in the A.M. Praying all goes well.

8) The boys' school pictures came in yesterday. They turned out soooo cute. I usually don't like their pictures and this time I didn't order very many. Figures they would turn out good this time.

9) It's 4:44 and I'm nowhere near done with this post.

10) My feet aren't happy with the shoe situation. I am so used to wearing flip flop style shoes that all my closed in shoes are giving me blisters. ouch!

11) I am finished with the last CJ I decided to participate in. I'll be mailing that baby out tomorrow.

12) I did a LO for a lady on SJ. Can't give away too much info I think its a surprise. But I really like how it turned out. I'll have to 'lift' myself. ;)

13) There! I did it. Finally!!! Have a great evening.

Number Crunching

2006-11-06T22:25:00.000-06:00

Someone sent this to me in an e-mail. I thought it was fun.

YOUR AGE BY EATING OUT

DON'T CHEAT BY SCROLLING DOWN FIRST!

It takes less than a minute.

Work this out as you read ... Be sure you don't read the bottom until you've worked it out!

1. First of all, pick the number of times a week that you would like to go out to eat. (more than once but less than 10)

2. Multiply this number by 2 (just to be bold)

3. Add 5

4. Multiply it by 50

5. If you have already had your birthday this year add 1756 .

If you haven't, add 1755.

6. Now subtract the four digit year that you were born.

You should have a three digit number.

The first digit of this was your original number

(how many times you want to go out to restaurants per week.)

The next two numbers are YOUR AGE! (Oh YES, it is!!!!!)

Have a fun day.

Thursday 13, #6

2006-11-02T10:29:00.000-06:00

Remember those wooden peg games that look like this???My kids love to play that game when we go to Cracker Barrel. Today's TT13 is about that game ~

Here Is The 13 Step Program To You Being A Peg Game Genius:
#4 to #1
#6 to #4
#1 to #6
#7 to #2
#13 to #4
#10 to #8
#2 to #7
#7 to #9
#15 to #13
#12 to #14
#6 to #13
#14 to #12 and
# 11 to #13

How's that for weirdness?!! LOL

Have A Great Thursday!!!!

Trick or Treat!!!!

2006-10-31T14:33:00.000-06:00

A man was walking home alone late one foggy night, when he hears

BUMP

BUMP

behind him.

Walking faster, he looks back and through the fog he makes out the image of an upright casket banging its way down the middle of the street toward him
BUMP
.
.
.
BUMP
.
.
.
BUMP
.
.
.
Terrified, the man begins to run toward his home, the casket bouncing quickly behind him
faster
.
.
.
faster
.
.
.
BUMP
.
.
.
BUMP
.
.
.
BUMP.
He runs up to his door, fumbles with his keys, opens the door, rushes in, slams and locks the door behind him.
However, the casket crashes through his door, with the lid of the casket clapping
clappity-BUMP
.
.
.
clappity-BUMP
.
.
.
clappity-BUMP
.
.
.
on his heels the terrified man runs.

Rushing upstairs to the bathroom, the man locks himself in. His heart is pounding; his head is reeling; his breath is coming in sobbing gasps. With a loud CRASH the casket breaks down the door.
Bumping and clapping toward him. The man screams and reaches for something, anything, but all he can find is a bottle of cough syrup!
Desperate, he throws the cough syrup at the casket
.
.
.
and
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

The coffin stops!

Happy Halloween Everybody!!!!!

{The Weekend}

2006-10-30T13:35:00.000-06:00

I've really had a different weekend than normal. Austen was sick on Friday with a sore throat and fever and we kept home from school. Saturday we had plans to go to P'ville for Mardi Gras. No, it's nothing like the one in New Orleans....it's a flea market downtown followed by a huge parade that night. It's like a City homecoming. Everyone comes home for Mardi Gras. You get to see old friends and catch up on life.

Anyway, Mike, who wasn't really excited to go anyway, got elected to stay home with him Saturday. I drove Nick, Nathen, my Mom and Chelle Saturday morning. I noticed Friday night, while watching the Cardinals kick some kitty butt, that I was getting a sore throat. I was really hoping to not miss out on going home. By the time I got home on Saturday evening I was really feeling bad. I ended up not going to church at all on Sunday, which is very unusual for me. I literally slept off and on all day. I would have thought it might have helped me get well faster but no sign of that happening yet. My nose is running like crazy. UGH!!!

Here are a couple of my favorites from this weekend....
This is the Pirate Jack....He's such a sweetie. He was riding a pony.

And me.....

I have this CJ I'm in...sorry SJ girls if you're reading this...that is about your hometown. I didn't really have any pictures of the town I grew up in. So this weekend I made the best of the opportunity of being home and took a bunch of pictures around town of the landmarks that haven't changed too much. Lots of memories. I still couldn't go out to my old house....I'm just not ready to see it. I thought about it for a while, but ended up in tears, so I figured it wasn't a good thing yet. There are so many changes since we sold it and I think I really don't want to see it in the new way. It would be like reading the final paragraph in that chapter of my life....I'm not ready for that to end so I'll leave it for a while longer.

Well, I guess that'll do it for the weekend update. My thoughts aren't very connected - sorry about that. I'll catch ya later.

{TT 13 - Edition #5}

2006-10-26T11:27:00.000-05:00

In honor of Halloween, and since I won't have another TT 13 before then, today's topic is Candy. Specifically, my Favorites.

1 - Reece’s Peanut Butter Cups
2 - Peanut M&M’s
3 - Almond Joy
4 - Snickers
5 - 3 Musketeers
6 - York Peppermint Patty
7 - Lindt Swiss Chocolate – Lindor Truffle White Chocolate (the yellow wrapper)
8 - Lindt Swiss Chocolate – Lindor Truffle Milk Chocolate and Peanut Butter (the orange wrapper)
9 - Kit Kat
10- Hershey’s Bar with Almonds
11 - Red/Strawberry Licorice
12 - Mr. Goodbar
13 - Oh and Kissables….
14 - and Take 5
15 - ooo, Boston Baked Beans
16 - and definitely Hot Tamales
17 - I forgot the Ice Breakers – Blue (mints and gum).....

Gosh....it was hard to just pick 13. As you can tell I'm a chocaholic - LOUD & PROUD!!!

Our fearless choir leader cancelled choir tonight since the Cardinal's are playing game 4 of the World Series. If she would go on and have choir, Mike and Nick would be the only tenors there. They would ALL suddenly come down with some contagious, 8-hour sickness. MEN - UGH!!!!!! Yeah, I want the Cards to win, but you know, they are going to play whether you watch or not, oh and you watching isn't gonna help them. DUH!!!! I plan on using the night to my advantage though. I have to do some cooking for Saturday (making White Chili) and hopefully I can get some scrapping in too. My fingers are crossed.

Have a great afternoon everyone....you can make it one more day....woo hoooo!!!

Big Sigh

2006-10-24T15:55:00.000-05:00

Can this day be over now??? Just wonderin'. *sigh* I'm so done with work, I just wanna go home. We're going out for dinner tonight. Our chiropractor has gift card days every once in a while and everyone that goes in that day gets a GC. We'll they have had 3 different days for Eckert's cards so I have over $100.00 in GC. So tonight we're going out to dinner at the country restaurant. No Cooking for me tonight. :D

I've been contemplating my crop today....thinkin' of a project I can do as a make-n-take....and am getting some really cool ideas from the girls at Create My Keepsake. I want to do something that is reasonable for me to donate all the supplies for but that is cool/fun/neat/creative. Hopefully consultants from SU, CTMH, and CM will all be there doing make-n-takes as well. It's looking like fun.

My dear momma just bought Nick a cell phone...Lord help me....he'll be so happy though. Bless his heart. My baby isn't a baby anymore....I can feel a LO coming on out of this though.

I'm gonna get ready to close up shop. The Cardinals and the World Series are in town and St. Louis is a zoo....So until next time......

The Cardinal Train Is Comin'....WOooo WoOOooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I've been a bad blogger this week

2006-10-20T10:17:00.000-05:00

EDITED: Date was wrong.

I only updated twice. Wow. Oh well. I'm here now and that's what counts I guess. So yeah, I blew the Thursday 13 again yesterday. *sigh* The sad thing is, I wasn't even busy. I just couldn't come up with 13 things to post. So this morning I get an e-mail from my aunt that's pretty cute, so I thought I would share that as my TT, with 5 extra points thrown in for lateness, LOL.

PERKS OF BEING OVER 50

1. Kidnappers are not very interested in you.

2. In a hostage situation you are likely to be released first.

3. No one expects you to run -- anywhere.

4. People call at 9 pm and ask, "Did I wake you ???? "

5. People no longer view you as a hypochondriac.

6. There is nothing left to learn the hard way.

7. Things you buy now won't wear out.

8. You can eat dinner at 4 p.m.

9. You can live without sex but not your glasses.

10. You get into heated arguments about pension plans.

11. You no longer think of speed limits as challenge.

12. You quit trying to hold your stomach in no matter who walks into the room.

13. Y ou sing along with elevator music.

14. Your eyes won't get much worse.

15. Your investment in health insurance is finally beginning to pay off.

16. Your joints are more accurate meteorologists than the national weather service.

17. Your secrets are safe with friends because they can't remember them either.

18. Your supply of brain cells is finally down to manageable size.

The weather is yuck now. I am so not a cold weather person and this morning, bright and early, it's like 34 degrees. It's waaaaaay too cold. The only plus is that the leaves are looking pretty. I wanna take Nick out this weekend for pictures before all the leaves fall. I heard we're supposed to have rain, maybe the rain will hold off and I can get a few pictures in.

I finally remembered to upload somemore of the pumpkin patch from a couple weeks ago. Here are some of Nathen. I really struggle to get him to look natural when I take his picture. He does too much "posing." After typing that I realized that he's like my dad, who passed away before the twins were even born. Dad always had this fake posed look about him in every picture. Anyway here's a couple of my favorites of Nathen:

This one is of Nick, the day before his 16th Birthday. We were up really late the night before and Nick was struggling to wake up on Saturday. I just thought he looked real cute - Bucket-Head. ;)

One more picture.....

This is my darling cousin ~ Jackson. Nathen spelled out his name with the dominoes. I wish I could have gotten him closer to them but I was afraid he would knock them over. He was so cute.

I just have to add this before I sign off for the weekend....I like the Cardinals since they belong to us but I'm not a sports fan. I do want to just let everyone know, in case you aren't aware, that they are on their way to the World Series. WOO HOO!!!!!! How exciting for St. Louis and the fans.

GO CARDS!!!!!

2006-10-18T16:22:00.000-05:00

No, Friday the 13th didn't get me but Tuesday the 17th did....I was blindsided with a migraine. Sheesh. Haven't had one of those for a while. I ended up going home at noon and slept till a little after 5:00. I've been a little groggy today but I think I'm finally coming out of it, now that it's 4:00 p.m. I just feel like the inside of my head is bruised.

OMGOSH!!! I heard the saddest song on the radio today by a new artist - Jason Michael Carroll. Hopefully you can hear it by going to his MySpace account. Click on the song title below. It's called:

Alyssa Lies
My little girl met a new friend just the other day
On the playground at school between the tires and the swing
And she came home with tear-filled eyes
When she said to me daddy, Alyssa lies
Well, I just brushed it off at first
Cuz I didnt know how much my little girl had been hurt
Or the things that she had seen
I wasnt ready when I said you can tell me She said

Alyssa lies to the classroom
Alyssa lies everyday at school
Alyssa lies to the teachers
As she tries to cover every bruise

My little girl laid her head down that night to go to sleep
As I stepped out the room, I heard her say a prayer so soft and sweet
God bless my mom and my dad
And my new friend Alyssa, oh, I know she needs you bad Because

Alyssa lies to the classroom
Alyssa lies everyday at school
Alyssa lies to the teachers
As she tries to cover every bruise

I had the worst night of sleep in years
As I tried to think of a way to calm her fears
I knew exactly what I had to do
But when we got to school on Monday, I heard the news

My little girl asked me why everybody looked so sad
The lump in my throat grew bigger with every question that she asked
Until I felt the tears run down my face
And I told her that Alyssa wouldnt be at school today

Cuz she doesnt lie in the classroom
She doesnt lie anymore at school
Alyssa lies with Jesus
Because theres nothing anyone would do
Tears filled my eyes
when my little girl asked me why Alyssa lies
Oh daddy, oh daddy tell me why Alyssa lies

My heart just aches for the children that this happens to. I know from experience, not me but some of my family, the terror, shame, guilt, and hurt that adults are able to put on kids. Please, please, please hug your children or even someone else's children today. They are so precious and should be cherished.

Thursday 13 {on Friday the 13th}

2006-10-13T10:30:00.000-05:00

In honor of Friday the 13th I thought it would be fun to do something scary and spooky. But since I really don't get into the FT13 thing, I couldn't really come up with anything. Besides the fact that this should have been done on Thursday. *sigh* Anyway...better late than never, here's yesterday's 13:

Pet Names

*Duke
*Duchess
*Rover
*Patches
*Jodi
*Chica
*Buffy
*Bubbles
*Rocky
*Snowball
*Maime
*Big Red - actually it was a chicken and it was my dad's idea to name him.
*Chloe (if I ever get another)

Well, it's friday.....WOO HOO. Another week down. Gonna be a busy weekend. Tonight we are going to church with the Youth Group, tomorrow we're gonna be doing the Birthday Party thing, and of course Sunday is chruch. So I'll probably be out till Monday. I might try to upload some more pics of the Pumpkin Patch (I forgot my memory card yesterday and today).

OH, if you are into Christian movies today "One Night With The King" opens. It's a movie based on Tommy Tenney's book Hadassah. The story of Esther. It's an amazing book. Go to the GodChasers web site to find a theater near you.

That's all for today. Have a great weekend everyone.

God Bless!

Happy Wednesday!!

2006-10-11T09:11:00.000-05:00

This is the latest LO I've been working on for about a week. I will have a similar one for Nathen when I'm done but I just finished this last night and am so excited at how it turned out I couldn't wait to share. I'm sorry the picture isn't real clear. I was trying to get one real quick before leaving for work this morning but it was overcast and wet out so I had to take it inside.

I am totally in love with this one. It came out just as I envisioned. That rarely happens to me.
Oh yeah, I'm gonna do something with Nick too. I just have to get an opportunity to get some good pictures of him.

Been hanging out at Create My Keepsake lately and they are having a weekly challenge to win a freebie. The only requirement is to use polka dots on the LO. I didn't plan it that this way but when I got done with this I realized I could enter it in the contest. How Sweet!! I'm going to try for a better picture tonight and upload it tomorrow. Wish me luck.

Since Blogger seems to be cooperating today, lets try the pumpkin patch pics....First set is Austen. That kid is such a photo magnet. In the second pic you can see the St. Louis Skyline.

I desperately want to upload one of the girl that went with us, but her dad is really paranoid about her pic being on the web so I can't. But I have to say that it's probably the best pic I've ever taken. The lighting is right, it's not blurry, she smiling perfect, etc.

Well, that's all for today. Have a great evening.

Stay Tuned for Tomorrow's Edition of Thursday Thirteen plus some more of the pumpkin patch. Blogger isn't letting me load any more.

Report From The Weekend

2006-10-09T13:24:00.000-05:00

I had an absolutely wonderful weekend. Even though I ran almost all day on Saturday I feel so rested today and even though normal people shouldn't be required to work on Columbus day, I am still having a good day.

Friday my boss let me leave 15 minutes early. Wasn't a lot but I totally appreciated it since I was so bored, not feeling good and tired. Anyway, I went home and took a nap while Mike and the kids went out to dinner. We pretty much stayed at the house all evening. *PERFECT* since we don't have that opportunity so much.

Saturday, Mike has a softball tourney in Southern Missouri and when he was done he played golf with some of his buddies. I slept in a little then sent my oldest off to 6 Flags with some friends from church. The twins and I went to WM, Goodwill (found a brand-new-with-the-tags-still-on cool, pink, long, corduroy skirt for $6). We ran by the house to get our lawn chairs then went to watch Kaitlyn play soccer (the twins were bored out of their minds - Lisa thought they would love it - LOL) then we headed off to Eckerts. We took a million pictures!!! Actually I took a little less than 80, but not all of them turned out :( Here's a few of my favorites.

EDIT: GRrrrrrr!! Blogger is NOT cooperating. Maybe you can see them tomorrow.

BTW: Thanks for dealing with my lack of coherent thought on Friday (YIKES - that's a scary post).

Blah...

2006-10-06T16:41:00.000-05:00

I'm having an "eh" day. Not feeling the best, really really tired, have a headache, don't wanna work, it's 4:35 and I'm sooo ready to leave. The phones aren't ringing, I have no work (I did it all this morning). *sigh* I wish my head would quit hurting. I wanna go grocery shopping tonight. I wanna make chili soon. I think I'm getting crabby. UGH!!! look out family. i don't even wanna use punctuation. I need to go to WM too. The boys need to pick out some costumes I guess. I'm not thrilled with doing that but I know they will want to dress up. *sigh* Lisa said Goodwill has some brand new costumes. I guess we'll go there first then head to WM for whatever is left. Nobody around on IM today to help keep me busy - Lisa's working, V is on holiday, Denise is in NY, Mom is working.....Enough idle chatter. Have a wonderful weekend. TTYM(Monday). Hopefully I'll have some pictures to share from our Eckerts excursion.

Tursday 13

2006-10-05T13:43:00.000-05:00

FAVORITE SMELLS:

1) Slow Falling Summer Rain
2) A Fire In The Fireplace
3) Fresh Cut Grass
4) Newly Turned Dirt (throw back from my days on the farm I guess)
5) Vanilla
6) Cinnamon
7) Pumpkin Pie
8) Flowers (especially if they are for me)
9) Shine - perfume
10) Puppy Breath (Just call me weird)
11) Chocolate Cake Baking In The Oven
12) Curve (when Mike is wearing it of course)
13) Coffee Brewing

(Gee...look at that...it's mostly about food *sigh* guess that shows when you see me.)
So some more about food ~ Going out to dinner tonight with some friends. YEAH~NO COOKING FOR ME TONIGHT!!!!

In honor of this being Breast Cancer Awareness month I've purchased a Lisa Bearnson's All About Me SB kit. It was only $15.00 and a portion of the proceeds help support the fight against breast cancer. Yeah, so only $3.00 go to the fight but it's better than nothing. So check them out and place your order. If I understand it right, orders over $20.00 get free shipping so 2 of ya get together and go for it.

Guess that'll about do it for today. Peace Out!

Mark Your Calendars...

2006-10-04T09:31:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow is the official Slap Your Irritating Co-workers Holiday: (I got this in an email and thought I would share. Some days I wish this were for real.)

Do you have a co-worker who talks nonstop about nothing, working your last nerve with tedious and boring details that you don't give a flip about? Do you have a co-worker who ALWAYS screws up stuff creating MORE work for you? Do you have a co-worker who kisses so much booty, you can look in their mouth and see what your boss had for lunch? Do you have a co-worker who is SOOO obnoxious, when he/she enters a room, everyone else clears it? Well, on behalf of Ike Turner, I am so very, very glad to officially announce tomorrow as SLAP YOUR IRRITATING CO-WORKER DAY!

There are the rules you must follow:
* You can only slap one person per hour - no more.
* You can slap the same person again if they irritate you again in the same day.
* You are allowed to hold someone down as other co-workers take their turns slapping the irritant.
* No weapons are allowed...other than going upside somebody's head with a stapler or a hole-puncher.
* After you have slapped the recipient, your "assault" must be followed with something like "cause I'm sick of your empty brain always messing up stuff!"
* If questioned by a supervisor or police, (if the supervisor is the irritant), you are allowed to LIE, LIE, LIE!

Now, study the rules, break out your list of folks that you want to slap the living day lights out of and get to slapping.....and have a GREAT DAY!

And on another note, I have to say that Megan on SJ has added some totally cool smilies. She's a pretty cool chica. Thanks M's. :)

Let's see.......nothing more to share that you would really care about. I've not been able to get much scrapping done, been kinda busy.

Looking forward to the weekend (what else is new - LOL), I think I'm going to hang out with Lisa, take the boys to watch Kaitlyn (their best friend) play soccer and then we'll go to Eckert's for some apple pickin', and some PICTURES in the pumpkins & mums!!!! I hope they turn out. Lisa always gets amazing pics so between us we'll hopefully get something worth showing on Monday. Mike will be playing in a softball tourney on Saturday so I wont be seeing much of him.

Okey dokey, that's all for today. Have a great Hump Day everyone.

ACK!!! I've been tagged.

2006-10-03T16:48:00.000-05:00

Actually it's kinda cool. It's my second tag and it only took me 6 days to find it. Yeah, I'm a little slow.

Ok, here's the scoop, Lily (Bluelilo) from Scrapjazz taged me. The Rules:
List 5 weird things about yourself or your pets. Tag 5 friends and list them. And it continues on in a vicious cycle.

1) I absolutely WILL NOT touch dirty socks. I will pick them up in with a dirty shirt or something but I won’t touch them. UGH!!!!

2) I am a loner. I would rather be at home alone or with DH & Kiddos than go out with my friends (even if the kids and DH are invited). Every time I have second and third thoughts about not showing up for a party. Even though when I go, which is most of the time I force myself to go, I have a really fun time.

3) I like Monty Python And The Search For The Holy Grail. A total nonsense movie.

4) I don’t really like coffee. I just drink it so I can use the yummy coffee creamers from CoffeeMate.

5) Ok, more than what you ever wanted to know but when getting dressed, panties go on last. Told ya it was TMI. LOL

Ok, I’ll tag:
Faith
Ashley
Ashlee (CMK)
Christy (Floridascrapper)
and ummmm.....
Kristi Sauer.

Have a nice evening everyone.

Just Another Manic Monday

2006-10-02T16:26:00.000-05:00

Now you'll have that song in your head for a while...just consider it a little gift from me. :D

Today has been absolutely insane at work. I've been really busy all day. On the plus side my day has flown by.

This weekend was really nice. The weather was beautiful. Played Laser Tag with the kids from church on Friday night. Had a lot of fun. We only had about 10 show up out of the 20 that said they were coming. They're teens so I guess we have to expect them to flake. *sigh* I laughed at all the right times at the "Drill Sargent" who was giving us the rules of play and he gave me a extra power. What exactly I don't know. I'm not real fond of dark, smokey places and had to fight down a little panic but overall - I had a great time.

I had a therapeutic massage Saturday morning. Normally I love them and the girl is really good but this one hurt. I am very sore - STILL!!! I feel like the layer, yes of fat, right under my skin is bruised and if you were to look at my back I should be black and blue. I don't think I am cause I believe Mike would have noticed. I am just very sore.

DH and I went out to eat at a little Bistro (hole-in-the-wall-yet-very-busy) in Edwardsville Saturday night for our anniversary. We went to Kohl's on our way home and I found some very sweet deals in the clothing department. WOO HOO for me. Sunday, of course, was spent primarily at church.

So that's all the updates from the weekend.

Oh I wanted to let you all know that the Month of October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month so be sure to take care of business.

Also, this is Pastor Appreciation Month. So send your pastor a nice card, take him to dinner, buy him a coke/coffee...something to show you are thankful for the Shepherd of your soul.

Friday Is The Day We Do The Happy Dance...

2006-09-29T16:27:00.000-05:00

Happy Friday everyone!!!

I have some fun things planned for the weekend. Tonight we're taking the youth group to play Laser Tag. I am actually looking forward to this. I have only played one other time and it was a lot of fun. Don't know how photos will work in there though. We'll see.

Tomorrow I get to have a massage and tomorrow night I will be eating dinner with my wonderful Hunny to celebrate our anniversary. Mom agreed to let the boys spend the night so this means we don't have to hear them complain that we aren't eating at McD's or some such place. We might go to Eckert's for dinner and do a little pumpkin/mum/fall decoration shopping. I really want to wait to do that with the boys and have Lisa and Kaitlyn go. The kids always have so much fun together, Lisa & I do too. I want to take some cool fall pictures there - so many photo op's, but we'll see what happens. It's supposed to be in the 80's sometime this weekend - sure beats the 45 we had this morning. YUCK!

Let's see, what else.....I am hoping to finish Denise's CJ this weekend. It's coming together quite nicely, Denise. It's killing me to not talk to you about it. I'm just glad you haven't been around this week to tempt me (even though I've been pretty bored). I had an idea for it, then Mike threw me a change-up ball and I'm going for it!!!! Sheesh, where did the baseball talk come from???

I'm on the lookout for a Scrapbooking Monthly Kit place and, thanks to V, I think I may have found it. Scrap Room looks really cool and I think you get a lot for your money. They also look like they keep up to date with the current popular items. So when the kit is posted on Sunday, I'm gonna check it out and probably sign up.

I'm hoping to leave the office here in a few minutes, so I'll cut this short.

Have a wonderful weekend - Be Blessed!

Thursday Thirteen

2006-09-28T16:52:00.000-05:00

It's that time when we bring you another edition of Thursday Thirteen.

13 DVD's in my Queue at Netflix:

1) Over the Hedge (On hold waiting for release)
2) The Great Outdoors
3) Somewhere In Time
4) 24 – Season 3
5) Third Rock From The Sun – Seasons 1-5
6) Wild Wild West – The old TV series
7) Cellular
8) The Pacifier
9) Chocolat
10) Taxi – Queen Latifah
11) Desk Set – Old movie with Spencer Tracy & Katharine Hepburn
12) Doogal – Kid movie
13) CSI - Season 6 (On hold waiting for release)

Here's a LO I worked on this week. While at a family reunion earlier this month, I was giving Jackson a hug and he reached up and hugged my face and said "CHEESE." He wouldn't let go till someone took our picture. Anyway I love they busy look here and the orange. It's another 8x8 thats hanging on my wall. This is quickly becoming my favorite size for fun, single picture LOs.

I actually did this on my anniversary. Mike went to the Cardinal ballgame and I stayed home with the boys. They were good and didn't bug me so I got to scrap.

K, that's all for now. Have a nice evening.

Challenges

2006-09-25T20:12:00.000-05:00

I have always viewed the "Challenges" issued by people on the MB's as something for someone else to do. They sound fun while I'm at work, but by the time I actually get time to sit down at home and scrap, the challenge is out of my mind. Well, I've been checking out a new MB and they post a challenge once a month for to be a Guest Design Team member for the next month. You have to upload a LO based upon their challenge conditions. So this month, I decided to take up the challenge at CMK. Here are the rules:

Please create any size layout that includes the following:
6 Different Patterned Papers
4 Different Ribbons
At least 10 buttons
A minimum of 2 photos and
3 flowers of some type---whether hand drawn, rub-ons, stickers, chipboard, Prima, etc.

I won't be uploading it to their gallery for the DT spot. Even though I like how it turned out, I'm not DT quality. I do think I might do more of these challenges though - it really got me out of my norm. Here's the result:

This is my sweet little cousin Xander at his first birthday. Mike and I had been to a wedding and stopped at the park on our way to the reception. Xander wanted to leave with us.

By the way, you should know by now that I don't edit my pics, I'm too lazy, so sorry about the extra bg stuff.

Here's another one I did this weekend. I've had this pic of the twins for a couple years. They had so much fun playing with the christmas lights (I was using them for a family photo "shoot") and they decided to play with them. This is my second stab at arrows. Love them.

I don't know if he'll read the 'ol blog today, but just in case....Honey, - Happy Anniversary. It's been 14 amazing, wonderful years!!!!! I have NO regrets. I love you with all my heart.

T.G.I.F.

2006-09-22T13:47:00.000-05:00

Wonder how many blogs have that for a title today. Intersting. Anyway, I am very glad the weekend is about here. Can't wait to leave work today and get on with my life. WOO HOO!!

Silly Picture:

What is a "Booty Bag" supposed to be? A bag for my butt? Any excess butt I have? Can I purchase more Booty if I want? Weirdness I tell ya. Oh and why does the florist carry it?

Here's a little math question for ya...

Hypothetically speaking, you smoke.

It takes you about 7 minutes to smoke one cigarette.

You have to take at least 2 breaks a day. Sometimes more, but lets just figure it as 2 per day.

You 18 days of vacation time per year.

You get approx. 10 days for holidays.

How many days off do you get for just smoking??

My answer to follow.

Nothing more today. I worked on a LO yesterday and I took a pic but it didn't turn out. So I'll have to do that next week. It's a cute one of an old picture of the twins AND I'm working on another LO hope to have finished this week. One more scrapping thing: I got the pics back for Denise's book. Not really happy with them. So I'm thinking on it some more.

MATH QUIZ ANSWER:
.
.
.
.
6.75 days. And she wants to haggle over a half day of vacation!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Still chapped about that.

Yeah, well anyway hope ya'll have a great weekend. Be back next week and we'll have even more fun that we've had this week. If that's even possible.

2006-09-21T13:56:00.000-05:00

I really wish God would move me from my job to something better/different.
I wish Mike made more $ so I could have more options for my next job.
I actually pray that I don’t have to work.
But if I do, I would love to work closer to home
I need a new work environment
Lisa has the perfect work schedule.
I would love to be home with my kids when they get home from school.
I just want to be a homemaker and cook and do laundry through the day so our nights can open up for more family time
Dear God, If I can’t change jobs, can my co-worker?
I really am thankful that I have a job when so many people are unable to find work or are physically unable to work.
I am worried about our youth group
I learned to spell Mischievous – thanks to 4th grade spelling
I’m waaaaaaaaaaaay too moody

For more information on Tursday Thirteen, see my post of 9/14/06.

Praise God!!!!

2006-09-20T11:38:00.000-05:00

Blogger is letting me post pics today, or at least right now. It's so frustrating to get these pics up. I sent them an email letting them know of my problems - like they really care. We'll see what happens.

So, this first one is a pic of the Flamingos at Sea World. The colors were so cool. My only regret is cutting that poor birds head off at the bottom. I wish I would have paid better attention to my composition. Oh well, Live and Learn I guess. This is 8x8 (which I'm totally in LOVE with) and right now it's hanging on my wall in a pageframe (LOVE those too). Oh, and another attempt at circles.

This will probably be the pic I use for our Christmas Card this year. I love it. I wanted to do a fun LO with it and practice the "empty space" look. I obviously didn't do real well since I filled most of it up, but hey, it's progress. LOL It's amazing how long it takes to get 4 little scraps of paper to look like I randomly threw them on the page. I love that look - gonna keep workin' on it.

And now for a Blogger question....those of you that read my blog and have some experience with Beta, *ahem* Faith - J/K - anyone really....Here's my deal:

I have 2 blogs (one I use as a test blog to try out new stuff on and then the one you're reading) .
I want to see what Beta Blogger looks like but I don't want to do it on this blog. I wanna try it on the test one. Is it possible to do that? I've also asked this question of the Blogger help people, but I wondered if anyone reading might know.

I know there was one more thing I wanted to write about, but I can't remember what it is....oh well. Ok, that's all for this Wednesday's random addition from the "Queen". If you like random read Faith's blog, now there's some serious Blogger ADD - just kidding ya girl.

Peace Out!

Tuesday's Blog

2006-09-19T11:14:00.000-05:00

Here it is, day 2 into a new week and I've not blogged yet. *sigh*

I haven't shared any pics for a while, so that's what you get today - pending Bloggers cooperation. Let's see what we get ~

I was hoping to get the pics to show up side by side, but it doesn't look like that's gonna happen. This is a LO for a CJ I'm in with some friends. This book was really hard cause the rules were that we could only use SU stuff. Her theme was vacations and I don't have that SU stuff, much less stamps for the pool. On top of it, there isn't really that much available for the pool theme from SU. So, enough of the complainin' here's the LO - Thank God It's Done!!

I had to borrow stamps from a couple friends to get me this far and many, many, many thanks to Just_V for helping to inspire me. I think the crazy thing is growing on me. Every time I look at it I like it a little more. I HATED it at first, but I think I was just tired of looking at it.

So, Denise with that particular pain in the pah-tootee out the way, I’ve been thinking on your CJ and ideas are formulating. I’ve ordered pics but didn’t do 1-hour due to $$ issues, but we’ll see how they turn out before I work on this anymore. It all depends on the pics. AND no previews. LOL.

Hoping for 2 more -
.
.
.
Blast!!! Aint gonna happen. Well, I guess that's it for today then.

BTW: Did you know It takes approximately 6-8 minutes to smoke 1 cigarette?

Veggie Tales

2006-09-15T16:15:00.000-05:00

Ever heard of Veggie Tales? It's a MUST in our house. The stories are good, the music is good and the moral of each story is good and the kids love them. So I hear that NBC has signed on with BigIdea to show Veggie Tales on Saturday morning cartoons. That was kinda shocking since each show is based on Bible story with many references to Moral rights and wrongs spread throughout the show and a Bible verse application at the end.

Well, apparently NBC, who also aired anti-moral shows such as Will & Grace can't let it air as is. According to Phil Vischer, the creator, they are having to do some editing -- "those apparently unacceptable, insensitive references to God and the Bible" have to come out. "So NBC has taken the very essence of "Veggie Tales" -- and ripped it out. It's like "Gunsmoke" without the guns, or "Monday Night Football" without the football."

Why can't NBC leave it alone?? How many times would my kids, if I had a TV, hear cuss words, sexual inuendos, and see a variety of immoral content while watching saturday morning cartoons or their network any time? Why do we have to sensor things that could help our kids to grow up being responsible, caring, moral, God-fearing adults? And no, I'm not naive enough to think this is the cure-all to being an upstanding citizen, but to coin a phrase - Garbage In, Garbage Out. Actions like this one by the networks are what makes me very, very happy to be one of the few who can say "No, I didn't see that. We don't have a TV." What I would really like is for Mr. Vischer to just say "Forget it." Is compromising really worth it?

Ok, I'll get off my soap box now.

And I'll leave with one thing I know ya'll wanted to know about me LOL ~

Your Celebrity Boob Twin:

Jessica Simpson

Who's Your Celebrity Boob Twin?

Have a great weekend!

13 Totally Random Thoughts

2006-09-14T12:00:00.000-05:00

I get to have lunch with my mommy today
I have to go to a family reunion on Saturday
I have to go to SIL’s house Friday night because "we need to get together." UGH!!!!!!
I probably won’t have time to scrap.
That dang pool really needs cleaned
After tomorrow I don’t have to see co-worker for 2 whole days!!!!
Purchased thermocouple for hot water tank
I finally purchased a weed eater. Now my yard doesn’t look like a jungle anymore.
Called repairman to fix water heater
Purchased 2 more thermocouples
Called repairman, water heater went out again
Still no hot water
I may end up buying another hot water heater

THE PURPOSE BEHIND THE THURSDAY THIRTEEN:The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. What do you do? Write Thirteen things about yourself, summarize your week in one entry, make it easy for other bloggers to get to know you on a weekly basis. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It’s easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! Thursday Thirteen

Thanks Denise for the idea.

WARNING -

2006-09-12T09:58:00.000-05:00

WHINEY VENT AHEAD: If you aren't up for a whiney post about my co-worker, just back out of the blog now.

My co-worker is a pain in the butt!!!! Most of the time I really try to not get into it with her since there are only 2 of us and we have to work so close together. However, I know she watches my time. When I come in from lunch or in the morning...her head whips around to her clock when I step off the elevator.

So here’s a little background regarding my current vent: We keep track of our own vacation days. Since no one has abused it, it kinda works on the honor system.

So, yesterday Mike got off work at 11:00 and surprised me for lunch. I have a lot to do at home so I was going to take a half-day of vacation and go home with him. John was at lunch and I couldn’t run it past him, so I decided I would go to lunch and when I got back, if John was ok with it, I would wait for D to go to lunch then leave after that.

According to my list, I have one day of vacation left until January. Well, what I didn't know is that D keeps track of my days off too. And while I was at lunch she checked her list. When I get back she tells me I only have a half-day left. And she told John that too. WHATTHEHECK!!!!!

Eventually she says, "If I’m wrong just let me know." How in the world am I supposed to prove it? It’s basically her word against mine. But the bottom line is, she screwed me out of a half-day of vacation. How can I take a full day now cause my boss is gonna thing I'm stealing it. I am so ticked!!!!!!!

So I guess this morning she felt it necessary to inform my boss I may be late. I had to take Nick to school this morning and told her I might be a few minutes late. Wonder what else she told him.

It's her job in life to be up in everyone's business and, I might add she is very successful at it.
Usually I feel better after venting like this, but I’m still really ticked off.

I’ve got to start keeping track of her smoke breaks….I did this morning and so far they both lasted 8 minutes each.

I’ll stop now.

~ 9/11/01 ~

2006-09-11T16:24:00.000-05:00

It’s been 5 years…hard to believe it’s been that long. It is still in my mind like it was yesterday. I can still see the images in my mind which were playing across the TV at my office. I know this is one of those occasions that you can remember forever where you were and what you were doing when you heard about the attack.

5 years ago I was working for a law firm in downtown St. Louis. We had a TV but never turned it on as it was in a back office/file room. My mom called the office asking if I had heard the news. Of course I had not so we all crowded in the office watching the scene unfold. I remember seeing the 2nd airplane crash into the second tower. It was surreal. This is America and things like this don’t happen here. What devastation. What a tragedy. I don't think there are words to describe the feelings and devastation, everything I type just seem inadequate.

I personally didn’t know anyone who was killed in any of the events that happened 5 years ago, but I do know people who were affected by it. It is my opinion that EVERYONE was touched in some way by this attack. My heart aches for those who are mourning today and having to re-live the day because of media. I pray they find peace and comfort.

In trying to find the good that might have come from the events of 9/11, I came up with:
God became important in America once again.
People started caring about each other.
Race was no longer an issue. We were all Americans!
Families spent more time together.
Children got more hugs.
People prayed more.

For a long time "We Will Not Forget" was plastered everywhere. But I wonder if we have forgotten. It is easy to slip back into a carefree lifestyle and forget the change in our lives from 5 years ago.

So I ask you, did you make a commitment that day to God or to your family? Are you still following through with your commitment? Even though there is no longer the visual reminder plastered across our TV’s and newspapers every moment of the day, please don’t forget the people who live with the results of this tragedy and don’t let their deaths be in vain. Take advantage of today and make a fresh start. Focus on what is important in your life…hug your children, husband, family and, above all, put God back where he belongs – on the throne of your life.

Oh beautiful for spacious skies

For amber waves of grain

For purple mountains majesty

Above the fruited plane

America, America

God shed His grace on thee

And crown thy good with brotherhood

From sea to shining sea.

God Bless America!!!

Love Your Handwriting?

2006-09-08T15:12:00.000-05:00

I was reading a MB and the Heidi Swapp book was getting mixed reviews. Some people it really really helped and others still were not "in love" with their handwriting.

As I was reading I was thinking that I'm OK with my handwriting when I'm jotting notes or doodling during church. Shocking I know, but I'm a total doodler (is that a word?). Anyway my problem is when I go to put in on a public item , like a LO, I clam up. I just can't do it. I'm afraid of messing up. It's a very valid concern though cause I've doodled on a total of, um, maybe 2 LO's and didn't like either one. In my defense though I must say that I have a new white pen now and I'm thinking they writing instrument could make a big difference. I do wanna try again. We'll see, but I'm just not a risk taker.

Let's see...we got the weekend here so this is what I've got to do:

I really need to find a weedeater. Our trim work is taking over our yard and is quite embarrassing. NEED to work on that. But Walmart didn't have any more. Guess I'll be going to Lowes. **
Need to clean out the pool and get it ready to put up.
Laundry is coming out the wah'zu so I gotta get that done.
Mike has a golf tourney tomorrow. So he'll be gone.
I am going shopping at Archivers this weekend and spending a minimum of $50.00 so I can get a free Daisy D paper pack. It's gorgous paper with some tags and flowers I think. Can't wait. I have no idea at this point what I'll buy but I'm definately spending a chunk of change. When I told Mike he didn't say NO so I guess all systems are go!! PAR-TAY!!!!!!

** On a side note, I told Mike the other day that one summer I would LOVE a landscaper to come in and do our yard that whole year. I want to know what would make it look better and get it in shape so I can keep it up. He thought that might be a good idea. I'll be looking into that for next year.

That's all I got for today. Have a wonderful weekend.

Brag Book...

2006-09-07T14:25:00.000-05:00

I made this little book while I as at church camp with the twins in July. I had a great time making it. It made for a great conversation piece. The people around me who were scrappers would look at it and comment on how cute it was and checking out all my stuff. I only took the stuff with me that you see in the book - NOTHING EXTRA! I got to talking with them and discovered that most of them were CM-style scrappers. Now, I don't see anything wrong with CM. I think it is a wonderful place to start - shoot, I started there. But it's not a great place to stay, at least for me it wasn't. There is a whole world out there that includes metal and patterned paper and flowers and chipboard and soooo much more. So this little book generated a lot of conversation. And hopefully it inspiried someone to go out and try some new things. I love it too!!!!!

There's so much extra stuff I used on here. The kit is from Daisy D's. I know the safety pins and colored brads are MM, the chipboard flower is BG, CS is Bazzill, ribbon came from SU and ??, Rub-ons - ??, Primas, Heidi Swapp - clear flower.

T.G.I.F. Baby!!!!

2006-09-01T15:14:00.000-05:00

Whew, another week under the belt and a 3-day weekend coming up. This has been a really long week, I guess it's because of the anticipated long weekend. Soooo, as you'll find out by continuing to read this entry, tonight we'll be at home. Hopefully I'll get some scrapping in.

As for the rest of the weekend, I'll be hanging out at my mom's tomorrow. Her 2 sisters and some of their kids are going to be there. It will be a fun time with all the babies and toddlers. Then Sunday, of course, is church. I can't wait...God has been really speaking to me. I never want that to stop. I always want to be able to hear his voice, whether through song, Word, preaching, silence, etc. So I anticipate Him showing up Sunday. Then Monday is Labor Day wherein I refuse to Labor in any way. We usually go to the picnic. I hear it's supposed to rain though. It wouldn't hurt my feelings at all if it did. I really wanna stay home. I have Scrappin' Fever. Maybe it's contagious and I should stay home just in case. I think I'll ask Mike about it.

And now for a little bit of business: After blogging yesterday I think I may have misled you all. I'm not depressed nor do I think my life is without meaning - I was just saying that I don't think there is anything interesting enough to share. I appreciate the comments though.

Anyway moving on to better things>>>>>

Last night I finally got DH to go to Lowe’s and get our Father's Day/Mother's Day gift. I really wanted to get him a BBQ grill for Father's Day and since I really wanted one too we forfeited the gifts for both occasions and have been saving up since May. We managed to pull together $300.00.

N-E-ways, Lowe’s is having this good sale this week....Free Assembly, 20% off the grill, & free Propane exchange. Even better is they had quite a few pre-assembled in the store and they just happened to have the one we wanted. So we brought that baby home last night. Tonight’s dinner will consist of Brats & Hamburgers. I've had brats and pork steaks in the freezer for a week waiting for time to get out there to buy this grill. That, my dear readers, was Faith in Action. Faith that I can get Mike to actually go out and pick the thing out and bring it home. So my mission is completed.

Oh and for the good part. We bought the grill we wanted, a mat so it doesn't mess up our patio and a cover and I only spent $29.00! How's that for budgeting?!?!?!?!?

Alright readers, that’s all for today. Have a wonderfully long weekend.
Happy Labor Day!!!!!

Guess what I got????

2006-08-31T15:43:00.000-05:00

Nope, I don't think you could guess so I'll tell ya. CROCS!!! Yup, hard to believe. I've been opposed to these crazy shoes since they first came out. But I got some in the flip flop style and let me tell ya....they are amazing.

I really like them and they are so comfy. I don't know if I'll bow to the ugly version yet, but for now I HEART these.

and now for 2 more random photos:

This is my Pooch - Rocky. He's such a sweet doggy. Very scary if you are a stranger walking up to the back door though (or so I've been told). We had a friend come over who is over 6 feet. When he walked in the door, he was eye-to-eye with Rock, who was sitting on our back steps. Moving right along...here he is at our back door where he will greet you should you come visit.

.....aaaaaaand, my hunny bunch....I HEART him too.

Yeah, I know it's lame, but my life isn't really worth talking about....actually my *life* probably is, but the things I'm involved in right now aren't really blog worthy...KWIM?

~ Adios

more randomness

2006-08-24T14:32:00.000-05:00

I will say that I'm excited for tomorrow. I get to go scrapping with my buddy, Lisa. We're going to Archivers and I'm soooo looking forward to it. *doin' the happy dance* Gotta get my stuff together tonight so I can go pretty much straight from work.

I have so much to do this weekend that I probably shouldn't go scrapping but it's too late, Lisa's already signed me up.

laundry;
clean the house;
go to grocery store (it's getting kinda desperate with NO food in the house);work on September's youth service;
final school supply shopping;
pay bills;
get scrap stuff together;
choir practice;
I’m sure there’s more, but I just can’t remember them now. Great, just think what won’t get accomplished this weekend. *sigh*

Oh, & I wanna put this out there: I really, really, really want a CRICUT!

Another day of blah. I wish I had something fun to post here but I'm fresh out of ideas. Sorry readers.

Boring Blog

2006-08-22T11:39:00.000-05:00

You would think with "The Jazz" being down right now I would have gobs of time for blogger....well, I do have the time, just no topic to blog about. I have been hitting all the blogs lately, that's my only link to the Jazz girls. So, I apologize to those of you who have been bored and looking for something to read this week.

I guess I could tell you about my oldest DS. He started his first year in public school yesterday. He's a freshman this year but he's gone to a private Christian school for K-8. Of course it's too soon to tell if he is going to like it, since they only went a half day yesterday but I hope and pray he excells this year and takes responsibility for himself. We shall see.

Tonight we have parent orientation for the twins. I would skip except that they are determining bus routes tonight. Not everyone uses the bus (lots of SAHM at this Christian school) so I need to make sure I get a good stop for my kiddos.

I can't wait till all this school prep stuff is done. I hate getting into this new routine and going to all the meetings and stuff. BLAH!!!

My boss is taking his son to college in Chicago tomorrow so he'll be gone the next 2 days, so the boredom will continue. Hopefully SJ gets back on schedule by tomorrow.

Well, not a lot going on, so I don't really have anything else to post about.

Have a great Day!!!!!

Have your ever found a dead body?

2006-08-17T09:15:00.000-05:00

As I was listening to the radio this morning and getting ready for work, the morning DJ’s were asking if anyone had ever encountered a dead body. I must admit that after CSI took off, I have been on the lookout for one, especially on my way to work. I ride our local public transportation (kinda like an above ground subway) to work through East St. Louis (ESL), IL, which has a very high crime rate. I watch the ditches, fields and abandon areas for bodies.

I did encounter a body once, but not in ESL. I was driving the family home from visiting my FIL, it was between 10–11:00 p.m. A truck ran a stop sign and was coasting into my lane. I looked over at the driver to give him a dirty look as I passed by and his head was leaning back against the headrest and I could see a bullet hole in his temple. Mike and I were freaked out cause we didn’t know if he did it himself or if there was a person on the loose with a gun in the area. He was still alive and we called the police. By the time they got him to the hospital, he had died.
He was a young guy – in his late 20’s – and an entrepreneur and if I remember correctly he had gotten in an argument with his girlfriend and then shot himself.

That was a really wild experience. Very sad for the young man and his family too.

Here's a Quiz (stolen from Beth who stole it from Lori):

1. WHAT TIME DID YOU GET UP THIS MORNING? 6:20 a.m.
2. DIAMONDS OR PEARLS? Diamonds
3. WHAT WAS THE LAST FILM YOU SAW AT THE THEATER? Monsters, Inc. (yup, don’t go much)
4. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE TV SHOW? 24, CSI: Los Vegas and NY
5. WHAT DID YOU HAVE FOR BREAKFAST? Raspberry Yogurt
6. WHAT IS YOUR MIDDLE NAME? Eileen (after my Granny)

8. WHAT FOODS DO YOU DISLIKE? Brussel sprouts and asparagus
9. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE CHIP FLAVOR? I love chips and dip…plain ruffles with French Onion Dip or Nachos with cheese dip
10. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE CD AT THE MOMENT? Psalms, Hymns and Spiritual Songs by Donnie McClurkin
11. WHAT KIND OF CAR DO YOU DRIVE? Chrysler Mini-Van
12. FAVORITE SANDWICH? Dill Chicken Salad on Cracked Wheat Bread from Edible Difference (it has grapes in it)
13. CHARACTERISTIC THAT YOU DESPISE? Stupidity (is that a characteristic?)
14. FAVORITE ITEM(s) OF CLOTHING? Sweatpants
15. IF YOU COULD GO ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD ON VACATION, WHERE WOULD YOU GO? Paris, Germany, Austria, Italy, Spain, some Islands (shoot, I'll go wherever - LOL)
16. WHAT COLOR IS YOUR BATHROOM? White (boring)
17. FAVORITE BRAND OF CLOTHING? Whatever is on sale, usually. I don’t really have a favorite.
18. TO WHERE WOULD YOU RETIRE? Somewhere warm – Arizona maybe, New Mexico, Cali…don’t really know.
19. WHAT WAS YOUR MOST MEMORABLE BIRTHDAY? I guess my 16th – had a weird Chinese party at a Greek restaurant (long story)
20. FAVORITE SPORT TO WATCH? None…I refuse to watch.
21. GOAL YOU HAVE FOR YOURSELF? Lose some weight!!!! Be a better mommy and wife
22. WHEN IS YOUR BIRTHDAY? December 12
23. WHEN IS YOUR ANNIVERSARY? September 26
24. WHAT IS YOUR SHOE SIZE? 8.5
25. PETS: One Dog – Rocky & One Cat – Maime
26. ANY NEW AND/OR EXCITING NEWS YOU'D LIKE TO SHARE WITH US? Not really
27. WHAT DID YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU WERE LITTLE? A bank teller
28. HOW ARE YOU TODAY? I have a stiff neck and I’m a little sleepy but other than that, I’m ok.
29. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE CANDY? Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups
30. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE FLOWER? Alstroemeria or peruvian lilly (not sure which one - feel free to correct me) These flowers last F.O.R.E.V.E.R.!!!
31. WHAT DAY ON THE CALENDAR ARE YOU LOOKING FORWARD TO? I guess 9/4 (it’s a holiday, which means a day off of work)
32. WHERE IS THE FURTHEST YOU HAVE EVER BEEN FROM HOME? Jamaica

Have a great day. One more day till the weekend WOO HOO

A Few Pictures...

2006-08-16T09:00:00.000-05:00

I just realized that I haven't uploaded any Mystery Dinner pictures, so here are some of DH & I and our kids.

I had a blast on the canoe trip. I only tipped the canoe over one time. Not too shabby for my first time out. We did 6 miles and I was ready to quit - my arms were aching. Also, by the tiime we were nearing the 6 mile mark, there were so many drunk (like passing out drunk) people on the river. I don't know how these peeps keep from drowning. It's amazing. We had one scare though. There were 2 guys (maybe mid to late teens) and a little girl (maybe 8 or so) in a canoe by themselves and they tipped over. NONE of them could swim and the little girl was hollering for help. We kept thinking that the guys she was with would help her but they just stared at her. They were holding on to a tree limb on the side of the water. She went under several times and it was taking her longer to get back up. Several people were trying to get over to the side so we could help her out. The guy we were with jumped in and pulled her out. He said it was pretty deep where she was - he couldn't even touch bottom. This is exactly what scares me. I'm not a really good swimmer and really the only way I can swim is if I'm wearing goggles - got some issues with not being able to see where I am. Thankfully everything tured out ok, but it was very distrubing...why would you go canoing and no one in your group know how to swim????

Anyway it was fun and I wanna go again. But next time maybe during the week when there aren't so many party-rs there (it was getting really old) and it's not as busy. I also would like the river to be a little fuller. We scrapped the bottom so many times and Mike even had to get out and push the canoe a few times. All-in-all though, good fun.
I don't have any pictures yet of the canoe trip. I took an old waterproof camera with me so I didn't pay for one-hour cause I don't know if any of them will even turn out. We'll see.

summerjazz CJ's

2006-08-15T23:00:00.000-05:00

Don't freak out...2 posts in one day has to be a record for me. Don't come to expect it very often LOL.

Here's my CJ pages for Michelle's book about Favorite Restaurants.

The tag pic is blurry, sorry.

Here's my journaling for it too. It; kinda hard to read, even on the actual LO but I couldn't redo it.

+++++++++++++++++++

I love all kinds of food, but it wasn’t too difficult to choose my favorite restaurant. Every birthday, I get to pick where I want to eat. My family really don’t have to ask where I want to go, they already know –
Zapata’s Mexican Restaurant.

If I order off of the menu, I order the Chicken Chimichanga smothered in that amazing white cheese sauce. Mmmmmmmmmm. Sometimes we’ll eat lunch there on Sunday’s and order the buffet. For dessert you can get all the cinnamon, sugar & honey chips you can eat. Delicious!!!

I just wonder if it’s required that all Mexican restaurants have the ginormous cheesy paintings on the wall.

+++++++++++++++++++++

My printer at home needs some new ink. I procrastinated on the CJ and it came down to me having to print and finish the LO at work today. So once the bosses took off for lunch, out came the scrapping supplies. I had the idea laid out in my head, I just needed the journaling part printed. Once that happened it was finished in about 30 minutes. The CS is textured and I didn't even think about it not printing well, but that's all the paper I had with me for journaling so....that's the way it's gotta be.

Gracie...

2006-08-15T22:48:00.000-05:00

The Amazingly Beautiful Gracie...

and her super funny and handsome big brother

(and then there's mom and dad too)

It's Friday...

2006-08-11T16:47:00.000-05:00

THE WEEKEND:

I am going on my first canoe trip tomorrow.
I have to get water shoes tonight.
I want to scrap, but don't want to work on the things that I NEED to do. I just wanna scrap for fun.
I haven't been to the gallery in months and really don't feel like going yet.
My dream car....

That's all
have a great weekend

Postsecret

2006-08-09T16:40:00.000-05:00

I was walking outside at lunch today.

When it suddenly hit me that I had passed several females.

After thinking about it, I realized that the thought passed through my head whether I was larger or smaller than each one of them.

I wonder if anyone else does this...

Yeah, I'm obsessed with the fact that I'm overweight.

GGGRRRRR.......BLOGGER

2006-08-07T15:54:00.000-05:00

Ok, this is the third time I’ve typed this. GRRRRRR…..blogger is killing me today. I wanted to post about Florida

Thoughts On Florida:

They have more than their fair share of Hummers. I think it should be the state vehicle.
They have more than their fair share of rude people too. Seems like all the clerks at the stores and stuff would rather not have me there. Now, some of these places were little Mom-&-Pop places. You would think they would want my business.
HUMIDITY – the temperature was probably in the mid to upper 90’s the entire time but the heat index was well over 100. The humidity is very different than in Illinois – much, much worse. I was speaking to one of the locals and she was totally shocked that we have temperatures in the low 100’s too.
Too many Toll roads. I saved every piece of change I could get my hands on. I think it would cost about $3-4 to get to Orlando from Cocoa Beach, then you gotta go back for $3-4.
I don’t understand the cars on side of the road. Everywhere you look there are random cars in the ditch. It looks like they might have swerved to avoid an accident or were hit into the ditch or something. The thing is, I don’t see how so many can happen. We never once had an occasion to think we were headed for an accident. What are these people thinking?
License plate variety – exactly how many different plates can one state have?
Ocean – need I say more? It’s simply gorgeous. When I stand on the beach and look out as far as I can, it amazes me. I can’t comprehend how huge it must be. Makes me think of the song "How Great Is Our God."
The plants and trees are so different than the ones in Illinois. I know it’s to be expected but it’s strange to drive along the road and see palm trees and Spanish Moss growing.

Every time we’ve gone to Florida, which is now the grand total of twice, our return flight has been delayed. Last year it was delayed due to the tropical storms that were blowing in. This year, the plane was held up in St. Louis due to mechanical problems. To make matters worse prior to lift-off, every time the Captain or one of the flight attendants would make an announcement the air and lights would go off. Let me tell you, you can be sure I prayed before that plane lifted off the ground. Yup, we were really taking a chance on that flight. But once we were in the air, there were no problems. THANK YOU LORD!!!!!!

I left 2 complaints on the comment card for the resort: 1) they don’t have internet access in the rooms. You have to leave your room and go to the lobby for wireless access. WTHeck is that all about!?!?!?!??! It’s the year 2006 people, set it up already. 2) Get new mattresses. Mike slept so bad that he ended up on the floor one night and slept better there than on the bed. Now that is just wrong!

When we were getting ready to leave, the guy that sold us our timeshare last year, Luigi, came up to our room to see how we were and how our vacation was going. When we told him our complaints, he said they were currently getting ready to wire the place so all the rooms had internet access. So next year should be better. Whew, I was sweating that one. Now the mattresses, who knows about that.

Luigi is such a nice guy. He ran into Nick in the hall and told him that he has a lump on the back of his head and the doctors have been treating it with Chemo. He’s a young guy too, probably our age, so it’s very disturbing. He never mentioned it to Mike and I though, so I want to send him a card or something.

I was not ready to come back to work, but I was ready to get home to my "stuff" and my doggy. Speaking of Rocky, Chelle house/pet sat for us and she said he moped around like he missed us.
I think he lost some weight while we were gone too, poor little guy.

Here’s a couple more photos taken at our resort. I’ll use either the one of the boys or the family one for our next Christmas card (probably the boys, it's the best). I have to try and get the haze out of the family one. Mom took the pic and had some sun in the corner, she also didn't make sure you could see Austen real good, oh well. Guess it's not as great as I thought. If you have any editing suggestions, I would really appreciate them.

And this one I really like and think it would be a cool school picture. Just need to lighten it up a bit and we'll have to see what a wallet looks like. K, that's all for today. I told ya the photos were sad.

Not so great photos this time around...

2006-08-02T21:46:00.000-05:00

I am either just not in the mood or there are very few photo op's. Don't know. So here is one decent photo of my mom and the kiddos. (I tried uploading but blogger wouldn't let me so a week later, here I am.)

This was at Sea World. I rented my mom this nifty little cart and she was able to carry around our cooler bag with drinks and stuff. Turned out to be real handy.

I just wanna say that the Female Sea Dragon's got it goin on....

I tried really hard to get a decent pic of them but it was dark and they were floating and wouldn't hold still *sigh* I am just curious when seaweed washes up on the beach if it ever includes a sea horse, it looks just like it.....Anyway, this is the best I could do:

and finally....even though I cut off the poor birds head at the bottom (duh, wish I could go back and do it over), my favorite......

I'll upload more from the rest of the week on another post.

Checkin' in from Florida

2006-07-31T21:53:00.000-05:00

Just checking in from Florida. Nope, it's not sunny today. It might have been earlier but once we landed, it went away. So sad...We even had a pretty rough storm earlier tonight. I just wanted to pop in and say hey so that I don't get stale. We really haven't done anything here yet except grocery shop (sheesh). We are going to Sea World tomorrow and we'll spend some time at Wonderworks on Wednesday. That all we have planned to do this time. We are going to enjoy the pool and beach Thurs and Fri.

If I have time and energy, I'll upload pics tomorrow of Sea World.

G'night.

PSA Hot Glue Gun - UPDATE

2006-07-26T22:51:00.000-05:00

Well, I don't know if it was smart or not, but I thought I would try out my theory regarding leaving the hot glue on your fingers to cool off before pealing it off. Let me just tell you that's not real smart either. OHMYGOSH!!!!!!!!! It's burned soooo bad. Now I have a blister on the index finger and thumb of my left hand as well as the huge sore on my right right finger from the other day. I guess it helped a little, I mean I'm not missing any skin now and all I have is a huge blister and it probably won't leave a scar like the other one will.

So I guess draw your own conclusions from my pain. LOL

In my defense, I didn't do this on purpose. I was being a good daughter and making a hat for my mom to wear to the dinner and it just happened. Just wanted to put that out there too so you don't think I'm some sort of freak who likes to inflict pain on themselves. Needless to say the hot glue gun has gone into retirement.

This is what happens when 2 bored, hyper boys get inspired and get my camera. Sheesh!!! They are just like their father. Nathen was posing and Austen was the photographer.

Vacation begins in 3 days!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

PSA regarding Hot Glue

2006-07-23T15:16:00.000-05:00

If you are using the hot glue gun and happen to get some hot glue on your finger, don't try and take it off before it gets hard. It will remove your skin too. OUCH OUCH OUCH!!!!!!!!

Now. the reason I was playing with the glue gun is we are having a mystery dinner theater with the young people at church and everyone is encouraged to wear costumes. Well, I made this hat for my costume and it looks really cool with my dress. The theater is Saturday so I'll upload pics of what everyone looks like. I am soo looking forward to it. Anyway here's my cool hat. I totally love it.

Gotta get ready to go heading out to church for practice.

Nutin' but Thankful

2006-07-19T14:02:00.000-05:00

...that I was able to change my airplane reservations this morning. I waited on hold for 30 minutes (and I know this cause my phone at work shows me the length of my calls). It cost me $34.00 per ticket to do ($200.00 total), but at this point I'm ok with that. I did manage to get a minivan for $300.00 for the week and Mike was happy about that since he was thinking we were gonna pay around $500.00. (Whew!!! Lookin' at all those zeros...that's quite a bit 'o cashola).

On another exciting note, I may be able to meet Christy (floridascrapper) and Cathy (everyone's favorite SJ Aunt) while in Florida. I hope we can pull this off...it would be so cool to meet a fellow Jazzer.

Ok, guess I'll go for now.

TTYL.

I am such an idiot!!!!!!!!

2006-07-18T21:47:00.000-05:00

I booked our tickets to Florida today...for a departure flight on the WRONG DAY!!!!!!! OMGosh!!! Can I just tell you how absolutely ticked off at myself I am. Geesh I thought I had it under control, but NOOOoooooo. So now I guess I'll have to pay to have them changed. I hope they can do it. I think I have to throw up.

We're going in August. I can't wait to get back to the beach and all that fun in the sun. We'll be flying in to Tampa and driving to Cocoa Beach. Totally cool times.

That's all for tonight. I just had to vent about my stupidity. GRRRRRR

See ya.

Sad but true...

2006-07-17T22:07:00.000-05:00

I am officially a member of the stale bloggers group. I just can't keep up lately. I was at church camp last week (no internet access) and now I'm trying to catch up on laundry and such.

I haven't even been able to do my CJ and I feel TOTALLY guilty. I should be doing that now but here I am blogging.

My boss will be gone Wednesday - Friday so hopefully I can get on and update some more.

Gonna go get the CJ done now.

AWOL

2006-07-06T15:33:00.000-05:00

Alright been gone again. Sorry `bout that. Life has been so busy.

SO here's the run-down for the past few days:

Friday night we started the twins b-day party. The sleepover went great. The kids had a great time - no fights, no wet beds, no sleepwalking. Whew!!!! All of these were concerns I had with 5 boys together for 2 days. One parent on their way out the door told me their kid walked in his sleep and one of the boys had to pull DH aside to tell him that he sometimes wet the bed, this was right at bedtime. ::rolleyes:: But all is well. LOL

The tradition at our house is that for each persons b-day they get to pick a restaurant to eat at. We got hit with a double whammy this time. I figured Austen would pick McD's or something since that's where he always wants to go. Nope, not this time....he wanted Longhorn for steak and Nathen wanted Lottawatta!!!!! So Saturday we went to Lottawatta and Sunday we went to Longhorn.

$$$$$CHA-CHING$$$$$

Let's see....Sunday of course was church. Nick got to go on a float trip with some people from church Sunday afternoon to Monday. He had a great time flirting with the chick in his canoe. She was being a DIVA with a huge tiara. But he had a good time. He came home Monday night exhausted and a little sun burned.

Mom wanted the twins to spend the night with her Sunday night so Monday I had the day totally to myself. That was awesome. I got to sleep in till like 9:30. I went to Hobby Lobby looking for stuff to make a victorian-era hat and of course some scrapping stuff. Then I went to Archiver's and got some things to make a tag book for my mom and the grandma of Baby Gracie. It's a really cute kit from Daisy D's (I think) with real soft colors and patterns. I plan on using black and white pics for it. I have one more but I'm not sure who gets it: Me, the new mommy, or her sister. Maybe I'll just have to make 2 more. Hhmmmm.

I got to enjoy some alone pool time too. Amazing to not be splashed the entire time I'm in the pool - a rare thing indeed. Monday night was spent making homemade ice cream. It has been a tradition in my family forever to eat it on July 4th, but I didn't feel like making it on the 4th so I made it early and froze it. It was YUMMY!!!!

Tuesday was spent at the church. We had a really nice day. I got to enjoy it for once. I played some spades and Mike ran the washer game. Didn't see any fireworks though. It was raining and Mike didn't want to go out in the rain, so we stayed home. Ended up with about 30 people at our house for an impromptu party though. They were all going to follow us to the fireworks so we could sit together and since we weren't going, apparently neither was anyone else. It was fun though except for the fact that I had to work the next day. It was so hard getting out of bed.

So that brings ya up to date - I worked yesterday and then there's today. TaDa!!!!

Work again.

Well, that's all for today gang. I'll be off work next week so the boss and I have been slaving to get all next weeks files through both of our desks before tomorrow. He's off 3 days the following week so when I get back it will be crazy Monday and Tuesday again.

Check with ya later.

Oh, and Denise I posted what was the only interesting thing from my missed days here at the `ol blog on SJ. Sorry so boring - LOL.

TGIF

2006-06-30T11:58:00.000-05:00

It' Friday People and I'm so very happy!!!!!!!! An extra long weekend is looking me in the face and I'm so excited to get it going.

THE BIG 10~
Tomorrow my babies enter double digits. I am so amazed at how quicly they have grown and how smart they are. Each of them has traits, likes, abilities so different from the other. Before I became a MOM (Mother Of Multiples) I thought that twins would be pretty much the same with very few differences. It's they are actually quite opposite.
NATHEN V. AUSTEN
Nathen
Very Studious
Meticlulous
Stocky

Perfectionist
Shirt always tucked in
Neat

AUSTEN
Smart - but don't want to take the time to study
Could care less - just get it done
Thin/athletic
Don't really care
Sloppy
Never tuck his shirt in

I've always wanted to be SuperMom, to be at home when the kids get home from school, be the party house for all the other kids, to have the summer off to spend time with them, have sleepovers, etc. Since I work full time that is pretty much impossible to do, but this weeked I get to be supermom ~ they are having a sleepover for their birthday. Now I know I should be dreading this on some level but the more I think about it the more I am looking forward to it. I think the boys will have fun.

In closing, let me just sing a few bars....

Happy Birthday To You

Happy Birthday Dear Nathen And Austen

Happy Birthday To You!!!!!!!!!

HAPPY 4TH OF JULY EVERYONE

Stay safe and we'll see ya back here next week.

Holla!!!!!!

MY BABIES ARE GONNA BE 10 :-O :-O

2006-06-28T09:39:00.000-05:00

Nathen and Austen are having a birthday this weekend. I just can't believe that it's been 10 years since they were born. Gosh I feel old. They are wanting to have a sleepover so I'll have about 6 boys in the house between the ages of 8-11. I've told them they should bring their trunks for swimming - that means I'll be having a lot of water leave the pool - I can't even imagine the splashes they will be making.

It's gonna be a zooooo. I hope I have enough blankets. I gotta get cake and party stuff together. I better get busy, I've kinda been flying by the seat of my pants on this one. Probably not a good idea.

and now, on to the "Random" part of my blog...

Co-worker is being snarkey today. As a result, I am SOOO NOT having a good day. I'll be glad when the week is over. I know for sure I have Tuesday the 4th off, but I'm not sure about Monday. One boss says we work, the other says he's not coming in and wants to close. We'll see what happens. If I know my bosses, we will probably be informed of whatever their decision is on Friday about 4:45. Co-W is considering taking Monday off if bosses don't give it to us for the holiday and she is also taking Friday, the 7th. The following week I'll be gone all week. Between tomorrow and July 17, I'll be with her 5 days at the most. I guess I can handle that. Woo Hoo for me!!!!

Update: I just found out that WE ARE OFF MONDAY!!!!!!!! HALLELUJAH!!!!!!!

You may or may not be asking yourself, "I wonder where she's going for a whole week in July?" Well I'll tell you, whether you asked or not...LOL. My little guys are going to church camp that week. This will be the first time for them to be gone from me & DH for such a long period of time. Usually, when DH & I leave they stay with my mom, but she won't be there either. I decided I will go and volunteer that week at the camp so they have access to me if they need me. Lets see...probably a couple hundred 9-12 year olds running around without their parents. It should be crazy. WHAT WAS I THINKING????!!!!!!!

Got this in an e-mail a few days ago and thought it was cute...
Biblical Songs
Noah: "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head"
Adam and Eve: "Strangers in Paradise"
Lazarus: "The Second Time Around"
Esther: "I Feel Pretty"
Job: "I've Got a Right to Sing the Blues"
Moses: "The Wanderer"
Jezebel: "The Lady is a Tramp"
Samson: "Hair"
Salome: "I Could Have Danced All Night"
Daniel: "The Lion Sleeps Tonight"
Joshua: "Good Vibrations"
Peter: "I'm Sorry"
Esau: "Born To Be Wild"
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego: "Great Balls of Fire!"
The Three Kings: "When You Wish Upon a Star"
Jonah: "Got a Whale of a Tale"
Elijah: "Up, Up, and Away"
Methuselah: "Stayin' Alive"
Nebuchadnezzar: "Crazy"

I'm stoked about the weekend!!!!!!!!

HEY HEY HEY ~

2006-06-27T15:16:00.000-05:00

Not much to post today. Gracie is doing well. They had a little scare last night when she started choking and she turned blue. They decided it was Acid Reflux. It looks like Jael may be discharged tomorrow (they are waiting on one test to come back about her infection) and they will be heading home to southern Missouri. I am sooo sad. I won't get to see the sweet little baby grow and I'm am really going to miss Xander. I just love that little guy. He is a wonderful big brother though. My mom told me she took some pictures of him holding Gracie - I can't wait to see them.

Continuing with the List of 100:
21) I love Mickey D's
22) I direct the choir at church
23) I am the wife of the Youth Pastor
24) The above FREAKS me out sometimes. No, make that MOST OF THE TIME it freaks me out - I never thought in my wildest dreams we would be serving in this capacity.
25) I am not the Christian I should be - course I guess who is??? We should always be working towards that goal to be more like Him. But lately it seems like I keep disappointing Him.
26) Fettuccini Alfredo is my favorite meal
27) I grew up in the country - aka Rebecca of Sunny Brook Farm
28) I couldn't wait to move to the city cause I hated the country
29) I wanna move back to the country - the boys would love it.
30) I'm unable to make up my mind (obviously - LOL)

That's about it for today...Maybe there will be more pictures tomorrow.

Elizabeth Grace

2006-06-26T10:11:00.000-05:00

WELCOME TO YOUR NEW WORLD BABY GRACIE

Baby Gracie is finally here and she is just beautiful. I can't believe how tiny though. She was born on 6/25/06 at 5:06 P.M. She weighed 6 pounds and 1 ounce and is 19 inches long. I AM SOOO IN LOVE!!!!!

Here's a of her dad and big brother - Xander, and of course with Aunt Becky. Technically I'm a cousin, but Jael lets me call myself "Aunt."

Now being excited about the new baby, I didn't even take a picture of Grace and her mommy - Duh me.

I just got a call though that Jael has an infection. She is really upset and scared, and I can't blame her. So if you're reading my blog please say a prayer for her.

YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

I've been a really bad blogger. The problem is I don't have anything interesting to say so instead of just posting that I have nothing, I just don't post. I'll try to do better - even if it's just to say "Hey."

Guess I'll continue with my 100 List:

11) Diet Coke is my drink of choice.

12) I have NEVER smoked.

13) I'm addicted to Su Doku

14) My house is generally clean - except for my bedroom.

15) I don't play well with others.

16) Mexican Food is my favorite food

17) I would love to quit my job and be a SAHM and work part-time somewhere either waitressing or at a LSS (that's a weird spectrum I know).

18) I really WANT to take good photos, but Mike is the better with the camera.

19) I would love to live in New York City for 6 months. I don't think I could handle it any longer than that.

20) I think it would be fun to have x-ray vision.

Happy Monday chicas - c ya ~

Wednesday's blog..

2006-06-21T13:54:00.000-05:00

I've had a delima about what to blog about - just can't seem to come up with anything. I decided to do one the BOM challenges from SJ. Now, I don't know if I'll do a LO about it but if I did, I guess this would be the journaling.

Journal about the meaning of your name.
Journal about how you feel about your name, why your parents chose it,
and/or if you think the meaning is true for you.

My dad told me it meant “TO BIND” which is why they chose it. I would be the tie that bound he and my mom together and would make us a family.

Research it at www.namestusa.com.
(According to the above website):

~ meaning ~
Bound

~ motivation ~
Has a purpose in life

~ character ~
One who likes challenge

~ feelings ~
An affectionate and loving person

~ intelligence ~
Has ability to concentrate

~ spiritual ~
A person who is faithful to their beliefs

~ nature ~
A person who loves life

~ inherent ~
A cultured person

I think most of that could be true about me. I don’t know what my purpose is (do you think I ever will? I mean I'm 35 for heaven's sake!) and I don’t think I’m bound (unless you think of it like my parents – “to bind”).

Now, after getting all that done, I realize that I already talked about my name (see my 6/12/06 entry). True, it was about nicknames that I've had but still....I'm like a broken record here. But since I've already typed it up and put it in colors and stuff, it stays. ::sigh::

llllllllllllllllllllllllll

I did want to have somewhere that I talk about ME. I find it really hard to talk about myself in a positive manner or to be brag on myself and my blog is kinda that opportunity to bust out of that shell.

I asked for help on what to blog about and JenniferH gave me a suggestion to do 100 Things About Me. Now, 100 seems a little daunting but I'll try to do it 10 at a time (especially when I'm blogger-challenged).

1) I would rather stay home than go out.
2) I hate water but force myself to drink it.
3) Pink is my favorite color.
4) After 13 years of marriage, I discovered DH likes hot tea.
5) I would like to live in NYC for 6 months.
6) My first airplane ride I was about 30 years old.
7) I am just a little claustrophobic.
8) I love almost all styles of music.
9) I don't like Rap, Hard Rock, Alternative Rock, or artists who tend to have explicit or violent lyrics.
10) I love chocolate but can live without it.

Ok, gang. There's my first installment. Have a great Hump Day. Only 2 more to go till the weekend. Woo Hoo!!!!!

LOST:

2006-06-20T16:53:00.000-05:00

{ MOJO }

I have lost my mojo girls. Anyone wanna send me some? It's really bad timing too since I signed up for another circle journal. I already got my first book to work in. YIKES!!!!!! I have a teeny-tiney little idea of what direction I'll go, but it's not completely formulated yet. Cross your fingers. LOL I promise Lori, it won't suck too bad.

On Sunday I wore a cute sweater with a pin that was made out of feathers. I was helping serve the Father's Day breakfast and one of the dads was teasing me about it. I had the funniest thought and couldn't share it with him, it would have been totally inappropriate. I thought it was hysterical. Maybe you had to be there, but you know now things that aren't really funny are overly funny in church. That was my dilemma. Sooooo, I kept thinking it would be a great Merkin accessory. I had NO ONE to share this with . Here's the infamous feather pin.

Mike played softball tonight and every time I go - they LOSE. So I went tonight to the game so guess what happened? They LOST!!!! There were a ton of really really bad calls by the ump, he didn't seem to have a clue about some of the plays. It was totally crazy. He called our guy out when the outfield guy clearly dropped the ball. INSANE!!!! Anyway, I took my camera tyring to learn about some of the settings. I have absolutely NO idea what I'm doing. I've decided I must take a class. I've been wanting to for a while, but after tonight, I realize I HAVE to. My poor camera isn't being used like it should. I kept thinking, "How does Yo & Sarah get those shots?" Man!!! So, the next thing on my list of things to do is: TAKE A PHOTOGRAPHY CLASS!!!!!!!!! I'm going to start by reading my manual - Again. ::rolleyes:: Oh Yeah, what fun!

Today...

2006-06-19T22:21:00.000-05:00

I got nothin' today...Nada, Nil, Zip, Zilch, Zero. This will be the most boring post in the history of blogs.

Here's a photo of Mike, his dad and our boys on Father's Day.

And that's all folks. Maybe there will be more interesting stuff tomorrow.

Randomness

2006-06-15T16:26:00.000-05:00

Alright readers I'm back after a brief, but semi-successful, hiatus.

DO YOU SEE MY BANNER????

HUGE HUGE HUGE PROPS MUST GO OUT TO FAITH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

THAT'S ALL BECAUSE OF HER.

SHE IS AMAZING.

THANK YOU SO SO SO MUCH GIRL.

YOU'RE MY HERO!!!!!!!!!!!

She must have sent me a million emails to get me this far. She deserves a medal for patience. Unfortunately I had to get some work done before we were able to finish up. So, the reason I said "semi-successful" is because there are a couple glitches, but I can live with them if they don't get fixed.

And now on to other news...
I got an awesome book mark in the mail today from the amazing Kristi Sauer. It's so cute. Thanks Kristi.
I also got a postcard from Jen/AFChick on Monday. It looks like a beautiful city. Thank you and stay safe girl.

I was swamped at work today. I had so much work to do that the I only got as far as the MB home page on SJ. How sad is that!!! I didn't get to read any threads and didn't get to go through any blogs. Hopefully I won't be as busy tomorrow and can play more. Oh and I gotta say to those of you who have left comments, "Thanks." I love knowing that you're reading.

Buh-bye

Imaginary Header

2006-06-13T22:15:00.000-05:00

I SOOO BADLY WANTED TO UPLOAD THIS AS MY BANNER BUT I AM SO AFRAID THAT I'LL MESS US MY BLOG...I looked@ and studied Lindsey's instructions but I'm afraid. She has a totally different set of code than I do.
Can you just imagine this is my header??

Father's Day...

2006-06-13T10:25:00.000-05:00

If you’re in a weepy mood, you better skip my blog - I’m feeling real melancholy today. I sent my sweet SJ friend, Carrie Lynn, a PM today asking how she was doing. She let me know that her dad has told them all goodbye and they are just waiting. This brought back so many memories for me of my own dad and his battle with cancer.
{cyber hugs to you Carrie Girl. Prayin' for ya!}

So since Father’s Day is right around the corner, I’ll commemorate my DAD.

I have many regrets when it comes to my dad. I never told him enough that I loved him. I didn’t remember all the stories he told me about my heritage. As a teenager I was ashamed of him cause he was so old. I never gave him enough hugs. I’ll never be able to ask him gardening questions. He never got to meet the twins – he would have had so much fun with them. Would he be proud of me? So many things…

It’s been 11 years. People say time heals all wounds. But you know it really doesn’t. It deadens them a little bit, you don’t dwell on them all the time, but it still hurts to this day that he’s gone. Sometimes I dream about him, that we’re doing things together, and he’ll be laughing. Those are the hardest days. It’s like having a brief moment with him and when I wake up I have to mourn all over again.

So, if you’re still reading…and if you are able, hug your dad for me this week. Get pictures WITH him, talk to him, listen, ask questions – if you don't have a great relationship with him it may not be the most comfortable thing right now, but you won't never regret it.

Sorry about the downer girls, I just needed to say that - really missin' my dad today. I was trying to find something that would change the mood of today's post, but I'm coming up empty. I guess there's always tomorrow...

Refreshed

2006-06-12T14:55:00.000-05:00

That's how I feel after this weekend. It was so nice to have Absolutely Nothing To Do on Saturday!!! I thoroughly enjoyed my Saturday and did nothing but lay out in the pool all day. I have a lovely burn to prove it, but it'll all be good and tan soon. The boys look like little bronze babies. I can't believe how tan their backs are already. Their legs are totally white though.

Calvin & Denise came up this weekend. It was good to see them although we didn't get to spend a lot of time with them. It was good to see you guys - miss ya girl!!!!

I have to toot a little bit, I am pretty proud of myself. I did this LO in about an hour and a half. I managed to steal some pictures from Denise that she had shared with me on instant messenger. It was of her little puppy Josie. I thought it would be so much fun to scrap them since they were so cute. I totally lifted the LO from page 131 of the July 06 Scrapbook Etc., my first lift that actually looks good. LOL I was going to scrap it and mail it to her but I'm too much into instant gratification so I gave it to her Sunday at church. I'm still shocked that I was able to start and finish it in one night.

I already posted on Friday when I ran across Beth's Friday Blog Challenge on SJ. So I'll do it now. We were to tell about our nicknames, who game them, are they still used, do I like them, etc. So here goes:

Technically, the name I go by is my nickname ~ Becky ~ the natural s/o of Rebecca. As a teenager I never really liked Becky. I always felt like it was a hick-farm girls name which, of course, fit me to a "T" as I WAS a hick-farm girl. The truth hurts, I was always trying to be something I wasn't. Now I still don't like it but I deal. Next came Gucky - I was really young when my cousin gave me this one. He was even younger than me and couldn't say Becky. It evolved into Cupcake - don't even ask me how. I stayed this for a while until high school when I decided I wanted to be called Becca. This one didn't even get off the ground! Nobody called me that. Sadly I went back to Becky. Till Denise came around and, much to my mom's dismay, began calling me Reba. She's the only one who calls me this and for some strange reason Mom totally opposed it.

As for DH calling me stuff, weellll sometimes I'm White Chocolate, sometimes I'm Candy which came from a Dr. John song (this one usually causes a minor irritation since that was his old high school GF's name), and Beck but usually just boring ol Becky. I absolutely will not accept MOM from him though. I HATE, HATE, HATE that. Other names I've had are Becky Boo. My Dad used to call me this. He made up a poem about me. It started, "Becky Boo, eyes of blue." Now, my eyes are brown and I would always interrupt him and tell him this important piece of information. He would always laugh and act surprised. We played this little game every time. Gosh I miss him. I don't think he ever finished that poem. Once in a while Lisa will call me this and it always makes me think of my Dad. Then there's Eileen, my middle name. Jael and I have the same middle name and, to be difficult, Chelle insists on calling both of us by our middle name. Total confusion when we're together. So there's the story of my nicknames. Now weren't you glad Beth asked. LOL

I've been busy most of the day at work. It's been a joyous day here at work...co-worker is crabby and not talking. Makes for a fun day when there's only 2 of us.

I had to save this as a draft and add the picture of my LO tonight from home. I haven't taken it off my camera yet. Hmmmm, seems to be the story of my blog.

FINALLY....

2006-06-09T08:33:00.000-05:00

Good Grief!!!!! What is up with the net????? Yesterday it was the Jazz today it’s the blog machine. Please why can’t it all just work with me when I have nothing to do @work. Gosh (said is my best Napoleon impression).

Last day in the crazy rat race…
I can’t wait for FRIDAY to be over. I am sooo ready for the end of this week. If you’ve been reading about my crazy life, you know I volunteered to teach VBS this week (momentary insanity on my part). For my schedule that means I get home from work, pull in the driveway and everyone (DH and kids) pile in and we drive straight to church and I don’t get home till 9ish. They are feeding the kids dinner at VBS so that’s nice for them, but bad for me. Monday night was a blizzard for dinner. I finally got a real meal Wednesday night – went to Sonic Drive-Thru (now that's healthy). Anyway, last night was the last night and tonight we have a youth thing so Saturday is the next day I have for myself.

During the week, with all our spare time, we’ve been working on getting the pool set up and it’s ready now– HALLELUJAH!!!!! So guess where I’ll be on Saturday????? I’m going to be selfish with my weekend – I told my mom to encourage my cousins to NOT come over Saturday. I want the pool to myself. They will probably get to go today so, the fact is, they will get in it BEFORE ME!! How wrong is that? I guess it'll be ok though since they are watching my kids for me.

Last year when our office moved, one of the bosses gave Donna and I each a GC to a spa. Now, I’m not really into the spa thing and have shuffled it around so long that it almost expired. So I got a brilliant idea to give it to my friend Andrea. She LOVED it, of course. But as a thank you she got me this really cute speaker thing for my ipod. First of all, she didn’t have to do that, especially since I didn’t pay anything for it. It was a RAK that I re-RAKed, so to speak, and she KNEW it. But I love the speakers. It’s like a mini tripod and every leg of the tripod has a speaker in it. It’s so cute. Here’s a pic, isn't it cute?:

I changed my avatar on SJ today. I figured since everyone else could have what they consider handsome men, I could have me one too. ;-) I picked Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow. What a bad boy. YMMMY!!!!!!

In April I went on a scrap weekend to the YMCA Lodge in Potosi, Missouri. I don’t think I’ve uploaded any of the LO’s I did there so that’s what you’re getting today. (I plan on taking a picture of the front of the Bronx Zoo before posting the rest of those pictures. ) These are Valentine Day LO’s.

I stole all the valentines from the boys and used my punch to cut them up. I totally lifted the idea. You can see the original by Julia Sandvoss at SJ called Love U. (Hope that link works, html is NOT my thing folks.) It's not done ~ it needs something more, but everything I try doesn't work. Either the color is off or something (IRL it is a lit pink with white dots but it looks purple here). If you have any ideas, pass them my way. I'm letting it sit for a bit hoping inspiration will come.
I'm trying to do more LO's with me, so this one I did of DH and I. The hearts and quotes on the right came pre-printed on the paper and since I'm at work, I have no idea what they say. The ONLY things I added were the black CS, the thing above the pic that says LOVE (it pulls out and I've journaled on it & put another picture of me on the back), and the ETERNITY tag at the bottom.

I'm sure you've seen these cool pockets to hold cards. I've always wanted to do something to save my cards so I did one for my Valentine cards this year. And YUP, that's some DOODLING. Don't be too shocked. LOL I know it's not a lot, and I wished I didn't do it, but...to late...maybe it would look better if I added more?

Anyways, that's all for this week folks. You know where I'll be this weekend so I'll write you on Monday about my beautiful tan. Please say a prayer for me that it doesn't rain!

Adios.

It's been a long day...

2006-06-07T16:46:00.000-05:00

I thought it would never end. But, I've actually had work to do today :-( (yup that's a homemade smilie) so I haven't been able to dream up things to write about today. I DID want to post though. For some reason it bugs me when I check through the blogs and people haven't updated in a few days. So I try to not be someone who doesn't update. I'll let you all know right now that a weekend post will be a rare thing. Other than that I'll try to post every day.

I hope the internet is moving better tomorrow. Once SJ went down everything was slow. There's even a delay in typing my post here but thank God SJ is back.

That being said, it 4:50 and I don't have a lot of time left at work. So I'll leave you with a funny:

A Sunday school teacher said to her children,"We have been learning how powerful kings and queens were in Bible times.

But, there is a higher power.

Can anybody tell me what it is?"

One child blurted out, "Aces!"

Thanks for stopping by ~ have a great evening.

Oops....I missed Monday

2006-06-06T13:44:00.001-05:00

I tried, I really did. But I got busy and...well, sorry I neglected you.

Anyway, I'm back today and have pictures so get ready.

6/6/06 - Does that number bring any scary thoughts to you? It doesn't really bother me, I DO think it is a novelty, but nothing to fear. The DH of one of my friends thinks terrorists will attack today.

According to the United States Postal Service, my package was delivered to Wendy today. So my portion of the CJ is officially underway. Lori said she would mail last Friday. If she did I should be getting it in any day now.

I signed up again for Memory Safe's monthly kits again. I should be getting that in soon too. Woo Hoo. It's some Scenic Route stuff. It'll be like Christmas with my new kit and the CJ.

The pool is up and over half full. It's huge is all I gotta say. I turned the water on on Sunday for a while and worked to get the wrinkles out. This morning I turned the water on at 7 and Mike turned it off at 6 when we left for VBS tonight. It's only a little over half full. I can't believe how big it is. It will be so much fun though. I can't wait for Saturday. The kids got into it today and played around. They love it.

I have a burn on the top of my mouth from the frozen pizza we ate for dinner Sunday night. Yesterday morning it even hurt to drink water, the granola I had for breakfast nearly killed me. It still hurts today but I can tell it's healing.

I have a **VENT** today too:
Apparently our church has a new summer secretary. It's great for our pastor cause I'm sure he can use the help since he's never had a regular secretary. She has set up her office in the "public domain office" (for lack of a better description). This office houses the computer, copy machine and color printer and misc office items that EVERY department uses for bulletines, newsletters, mailers, schedules, etc. She informed me Sunday night that the computer is now password protected and besides the pastor there are only 3 people who have the password. I'm thinking what the heck!!!!!!!! Then she proceedes to tell me that there are more changes coming soon - like with the bulletin. Oh Really????!!!! I'm on that rotation and knew nothing about it, so I went to the person who heads up the bulletin schedule. SHE KNOWS NOTHING EITHER!!!!!!! Anyway, last night we go to VBS which, as most first nights of any event, was chaotic. I specifically took my laptop so I wouldn't have to try to get on her dumb computer to print some things off for my class. I walk in the door and she has completely changed the office around. NOTHING is where it used to be!!!!!!!!! Talk about added chaos. I am soooo ticked off at her right now, I don't know what she was thinking. Rumor has it (and it's TOTALLY a RUMOR) that she did all this w/o the pastor knowing she was going to do it. I serously had to go to my classroom and pray. There was no way I could teach kids with that nasty attitude. I'm still really ticked. Can't you tell?! I can't really say vent off, cause I'm still ticked but I'll stop this paragraph, how about that?

And now I leave you with the Bronx Zoo...(I didn't get an outside shot of their sign. It'll be coming soon.)

This is one of the rooms inside. She hung fabric on the ceiling.

That's all I'm uploading today. Everything seems to be running in slow motion today. GRRRR. I'll do more tomorrow.

Peace Out!

T.G.I.F.

2006-06-02T15:00:00.000-05:00

Finally Friday!!! Usually 4-day work weeks go by really quickly. This week has just felt like it lasted forever. I'm glad it's finally here. Again, nothing to talk about. I even waited till late in the day thinking something would come up but....Nada! Sorry folks.

I do want to thank the peeps who are commenting on my stuff. Makes me feel special to know that someone took time to read what I had to say, although what I have to say is getting real lame~sorry. LOL

Lets see, how about another list of weekend activities:

Tonight going to Chevy's to eat dinner with my sister-in-law and her daughter. I don't know if the rest of the family will be there or not. We'll finally get to see Michaela prego. Can't imagine it since she's so skinny;
Pick up the tiller from Gary;
Tomorrow my mom is having a yard sale;
One of our young people is having a birthday party at 12;
VBS meeting at 1; :(
Watch Alisha at 5; It's her mommy and daddy's anniversary.
Wanna get the pool set up and get in the cool water;
Oooo and, I almost forgot this one, go by the Bronx Zoo. It's a little shop in town that sells all kinds of stuff - clothes, furniture, yard ornaments, etc. It's an excentric place. The owner takes trips to buy stuff from California, New York and Mexico so she has a lot of things that you wont normally find here in Podunck Illinois. She lets local people sell their hand crafted things there too. This lady is so nice. Mike went in there and she told him she would save some stuff for me to look at. How sweet was that? Anyway...I'll try and take my camera to this place. It's really worth seeing, since it's so much fun. My photography skills are really poor, but you'll get the point.

Oh, I found a photo that I haven't posted yet, so here's your daily dose of scrapbooking...I was thinking a BOM would be a good thing to start doing and this would go in that book. I thought the pic and the quote went together so well. The quote is:

"LIfe is just a mirror, and what you see out there, you must first see inside of you."

I thought I would journal about what I see in myself and kind of relate it to beauty. But it was hard to write positive about myself, or from the heart. So the tag behind my pic is blank. Does anyone KWIM on this?
Guess that'll do me for the day. Probably won't post over the weekend. So until I blog again...
Stay safe, have fun, be blessed.

See ya next week ~ {{{CYBER HUGS}}}

The winds of change...

2006-06-01T15:36:00.000-05:00

Scrapjazz just announced that Scrapbook.com just bought them!!! I understand to a point since Ben & Andrea are starting a family, which is a full-time job. I know the web site is too. I love the way they have maintained a friendly, non-attacking atmosphere and a close knit community. I'm sure Jill and her team will do their best to maintian that and the word on the street is there aren't big changes coming but you never know. Hopefully they will stay a part of the board and let us see the growth of their little one (although they haven't been real forthcoming with many details to date - unless I missed them). Anyways, Good luck Ben & Andrea.

Random Stuff:
Not a lot to talk about today - the SJ thang seems to be the only thing for me. Not that I'm obsessed, I just saw it and am still thinking about it.

It's raining again. Blech! I know we could use it. Oh Well.

I've been working on getting my online IM status thing on my blog. I think it worked. Now, if it works correctly, you can click the status icon and send me an IM. It took forever to find a website with the code though. Why is it so hard to find these codes!!!!!!
Next thing I want to do is figure out how to get the little smilies on here. I've figured out the places to get the code, but it doesn't convert the code to the litte smilie/emoticon. [img]http://users.pandora.be/eforum/emoticons4u/sad/1011.gif[/img] Ok, that's supposed to be a
sad face.

My song is on. Come On Eileen. Well, it is my middle name. Thanks Dexy's Midnight Runners for the song. :-)

I don't have a clue about html stuff and it's just sheer luck and Denise's DH that got me this far. It's so stinkin' complicated.

Lisa said that we could borrow Gary's tiller to do our yard to set up the poole. YEA!!! At least now we don't have to rent one. We just have to get some free time to pick it up, do the yard real quick and return it. I really really really want to get in my pool!!!!!

In the last week I've altered a clipboard and 2 pieces of puzzle.

I'll leave you with pics of the altered puzzle. Thanks for reading.

Christmas in MAY

2006-05-31T11:50:00.000-05:00

I have had this picture for 3 years - YES THREE!!!!! ::Gasp::

It's Mike's family and we are on the staircase in Toni & Mike's old house. Granted, there are some people in the pic who are no longer in the family and some family that wasn't family when the picture was taken and one brother who didn't bother showing up. It was Christmas for Goodness Sake!!!!! Regardless, it's a good pic of most of the POOLE CLAN.

When I first saw the BG Blitzen stuff I knew it was gonna be great on here. The red CS is Bazzill (sweet stuff). Totally lovin' how it turned out too.

lelelelelelel

Can I just say that I am soooo dumb. Our church is having Vacation Bible School again this year. I am not a teacher in any Sunday School class, nor do I have time to be. I figured the teacher parts would be taken care of by the existing teachers. We didn't want to have to be at the church every single night so Mike & I signed up to help get the stuff set up and get the sets painted and stuff. Jess told me last night that she had some people back out and was now short some teachers. I felt sorry for her and volunteered to be a teacher ~ but just for VBS ~ NOT SS!!! I don't have time for this and was really looking forward to a week off, but I guess it's not gonna happen. I'll be teaching 4th & 5th grades. They will be an easy group since I'm used to that age - Nathen & Austen will be in 4th grade next year. BUT.....the point is now I'm busy next week.

On the up side, Tracy just called me and told me she volunteered today and we'll be sharing a class. So between the 2 of us we should be able to handle this. I am very happy to have her help. She is a school teacher and our friendship goes way back with a little hiatus in the middle - called LIFE. So our class is now officially going to be the BOMB!!!!!

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

Just wanted to share that I'm wearing an Orange shirt today courtesy of Andrea. Love it! So bright and cheery.

YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

How could I forget to post this when talking about Memorial Day????
The kids always play with water guns at the picnic. I could only find 2 of our 3 water guns so on the way to the picnic I took Nick and his friend to WM to pick up another gun. Let me say that I wasn't dressed to kill and I was not going to win a fashion contest but I was comfortable. On the way out of WM Nick asked me why I was waddling. WADDLING!!!!?!!!!!?!!!?!!!!!?!!? OMGosh he nearly died cause I nearly killed him. I informed him - through clenched teeth - that FAT PEOPLE DO THAT GOSH!!!! He said I don't always do it but I was just then and he just wondered what was wrong, like did I "have a wedge or something?!" Sssssooooooooo not nice. Like a good son he did say I wasn't fat though. Like that helped at that point in time.

+++++++++++++++++++++++

And finally...

Oscar, on SJ, challenged us to send some cyber hugs to our friends. I started thinking of who I would send to and I think everyone at SJ came to mind.

Dani~ girl you've been on my mind. Hope and pray for your continued recovery.
Jitterbuggie and Patter and their DDs.
Oscar ~ Because you live in pain.
Denise ~ Prayin' you sell your house soon girlie. I'm trying to help. Everyone that's looking I tell them about yours.
Ashley, Brian and Clayton ~ My heart breaks for you guys. Ashley & Brian for continued strength and rest and Clayton to get better.

Guess these sort of turned out to be more like prayer requests. But {{{{{GIANT HUGS}}}}} to all of you.

Denise has always wanted to be tagged, so I'll tag her. Spread the luv girl. ;-)

TAFN ~ Ciao

Skipping Monday

2006-05-30T14:35:00.000-05:00

I don't care too much for Monday's. If I could I would skip them altogether, which we kind of did this week since Monday was a holiday. Woo Hoo!!!!

I want to start this post off with saying thank you to our Veterans and those who still serve in the military. I am very appreciative of my freedom. I try to avoid the news cause it's biased one way or another but regardless of what is being said, there are people in America who support you and stand behind you and have not forgotten. I also want to thank the wives, children, mothers & fathers of those who are not at home because of their service. Each one of you is a hero! You have sacrificed for me and I THANK YOU.

What the heck happened to my ability to change the color of my fonts????????????? DARN IT!!!!!!!!!! So NOT happy about this.
Ummm, nevermind, I found it. DUH ME!!!

+++++++++++++++++

Saturday Mike bought us another pool, since he got mad and threw the last one away. He wouldn't set it up though. I guess we'll do that this week - as least I hope so. Yesterday would have been perfect for it. It's 4 foot one. Not too shabby.

Yesterday we went to the park for our annual Church Memorial Day Picnic. Would you believe that I forgot my camera!?!?!?!? Gosh. I was so ticked. We had some excitement too - one of Mikes buddys asked his girlfriend to marry him there. It was so cute - but NOOOONNNE got it on film. Sheesh. On the good side, I loved being outside all day. It was awesome. Started my summer tan, got a little bit of a burn, but not too bad. The guys played softball all day and I played a few games of volleyball. Other than that I was lazy.

Got to see my cute little cousins - Xander and Jackson. Jael will deliver Baby Gracie any time now. She is staying with my mom until she delivers. She only has a couple more weeks till her due date and I said she would not deliver early. Maybe Baby Gracie will wait for her "Aunt" Becky. Jael went early with Xander so I don't think I'll win but it was fun to bug Momma about waiting.

When I got home I finished a LO I was working on. Looks pretty good, at least it did last night. I want to look at it again tonight before I decide I'm done with it.

I've decided I want a Jeep. I don't know what kind yet, but I want one. I think it would be way cool to ride around in one. It would have to be one with a hard shell for the winter, cause I hate being cold, and a soft shell for the summer rains. I think Mike is willing and is even looking to sell our truck. YEAH!!!! So a new-to-us vehicle may be in store for us soon. I just have to research what I'm wanting. This is somthing like what I'm wanting.

+++++++++++++++++

Mike had to visit the company doc today for his annual (?) checkup. He texted messaged me:

"Just got done with Dr. C. Richard Grabbit, M.D. and I'm fine."

LOL ~ See Richard Grab It. Niiiiiice.

Guess that will do it for today. Buh-Bye for now.

Tagged...

2006-05-28T23:22:00.000-05:00

This is the first time I've been tagged and I have to say I have been avoiding doing this one, but since Denise was so generous by tagging me, I guess I'll comply...

What's In/On:

My fridge:
Milk
Sweet Tea
Lemon aid
bottled water
some leftovers one of the guys brought home from some restaurant
eggs from Easter ::EEK::
cheese slices
misc. toppings for salads, ice cream, etc.
God only knows whats in the crisper drawers.

My Closet:
clothes
shoes
dresses
shirts
sheets for our bed
extra kleenex boxes (don't know why I opted to store them here)

My Purse:
Wallet
cell phone
cute altered book from Lori (Laurensmom)
ibuproffen
pens
checkbook
jump drive
metro pass
pictures
mirror
lotion
fingernail clippers
contact case
sunglasses

My Car:
toys
blanket (Riding with Mike I get cold - he cranks the air)
our Bibles
toys
ipod thingy that lets me play through the radio
church keys
composition book
toys
air pump for flat tire
trash
newspapers that should have been dumped 3 weeks ago in the recycle bin
Sunglasses
that's all just from the top of my head.
Oh, did I say toys - They're everywhere.

My DVR (or TIVO):
No TV here!!!

Summer Jazz Journal

2006-05-28T22:08:00.000-05:00

Yup, I said I wasn't going to get involved in another one of these for a while, but here I am, another circle journal. I chose Summer for the theme since I'm soooo glad it's finally here. I also thought it would be kind of easy to do since it's a season and sort of generic.

I finally got some time to work on it this weekend. I kept it really simple as far as the rules go, but I went a little crazy on the patterned paper. LOL. None of my pages match. It doesn't even look like one person did it all. But that's ok with me. I'm looking for it to be bright and cheery, unless someone don't care for Summer.

I thought it would be easier posting my pages here instead of on the boards - I am soooo gallery-posting-challenged. So here ya are...

First, here's the outside of my book:

SUMMER:
Since my sign-in is a little more complicated hopefully the rest of the CJ will be easy.

Please do at least 2 pages, but no more than 4, about SUMMER. It can be reality or a wish, a memory, your favorite or least favorite thing about summer, where you vacation or want to vacation, colors, smells, at the pool, the beach ~ anything to do with YOUR summer. Somewhere on your LO or sign-in I would like a picture of you. Don’t attach your pages, in any way, to someone else’s pages. Other than those few things, anything else goes.

SIGN-IN:
Alrighty girls, I don’t mean to be complicated here, but I wanted to try something new.
So my sign-in has 2 parts.

1) Decorate, fill and sign a library pocket. Include your real name, SJ name, the date, and where you’re from.

2) Then select 2 pieces of puzzle and alter them using the following color scheme: Golden harvest (yellow), black and red. Somewhere on the pieces write your SJ name. (You can do this on the back if you want, I just want to be able to tell whose piece I’m looking at.) You may do 2 pieces that would connect or 2 separate ones.

Rules for Altering: There are no rules!! Well, except one- Don't wrap anything around the pieces. Keep the sides clear so that the puzzle can be put back together. Other than that feel free to ink, paint, sand, paper, chalk, or even use crayons! Add whatever embellishments and bling you want (so long as you stay within in the color scheme); ribbon, flowers, metals, charms - you name it! Get creative and have fun! This is also a great way to use up some scraps!

When my puzzle returns home, I hope to assemble it and hang it on a wall in my scrapping space. I have painted one of the puzzle pieces with actual paint from my walls so you know exactly what my colors are. (I’ll re-alter this piece when it comes home.)

Portions of the above rules were copied from a thread at www.scraplove.com. There are some examples of puzzle pieces in their gallery and links to completed puzzles at 2P’s.
Here is the address for the thread: http://www.scraplove.com/forum/showthread.php?t=14404&highlight=circle

& then my layout. Thanks for looking.

YAAAAAYYYYYYY IT'S FRIDAY

2006-05-26T10:42:00.000-05:00

WOO HOO. I tell you, I have never been so excited for the weekend. This has been the longest week - totally bored here at work. I think everyone is in summer vacation mode. The phones aren't busy, the mail is slim and the dictation is minimal. I asked my boss if I could leave early today, he's leaving too, and he was fine with it. So I'm outta here in 1 hour baby!

I feel bad for neglecting my blog yesterday but I really had nothing to say, just like to today. Oh well, I'm just happy to be leaving soon.

Oh, and I'll be heading straight to the LSS when I leave. Gotta get a few things for some special peeps and some stuff for my CJ. I swore I would not do another one of these for a while. But look at me now. ::rolling eyes:: There's only 5 of us though so it shouldn't be too hard.

The weekend is crazy, as usual. Here's my list of things to do:

Buy nathen some shorts and nick some new jeans.
Work on my circle journal.
Buy some stuff for my CJ: envelope for puzzle pieces; library pockets; another piece of the summer pool paper;
hang the sign at church for SFC pledges
graduation party on friday night
massage - 10:00 am Saturday
Youth party on Saturday - at Mini-Golf 7 p.m
grocery shop for picnic (notice this isn't done. It was pathetic what we took - and that's all I'll say about that.)
monday is the picnic
get door prize for picnic (Scott did this)

(What's DONE is in RED.)

I'll add more as I remember. This will be my check list. Gotta go, my boss just brought me some dictation. WHY NOW??!?!?!?!!!!

Have a wonderful, safe weekend everybody.

Happy Hump Day Everybody!!!!!!

2006-05-24T13:37:00.000-05:00

I really don't have anything of any importance to write today. So you're gonna get a random post.

You know that song "Workin' For The Weekend"? Well, that's my theme song. I LIVE for the weekend. Can't wait. Not that we have anything special planned, but that I just don't have to go to work. And in the words of Martha, it's "a good thing."

I'm feeling soooo huge today. Perhaps it's because of the skirt I have on. Somedays are better than others. I keep trying to lose this weight, but I've been really hungry today, so unfortunately I pigged out at lunch on Pasta House pasta and salad. YUMMY!!! I am so full. Can you say "BLOATED!!!!" Since the rain looked like it was going to hold off, my mom brought Nick over and they ate lunch with me today.

I joined a circle journal and anyone who knows me knows that I get these random wild hairs and get all kinds of crazy notions. Well, I've never really understood the fascination of altering puzzle pieces. But I found a really cool swap (on another site ~ eek) where you treat it like a CJ and assign a theme/color scheme for your puzzle pieces and everyone alters a piece of your puzzle. Then you can assemble it and somehow put it in a frame or on a SB page. I thought this would be a cool piece of original artwork to hang in my scrap area at home. Riiiiiiiigghtttt.

So I went on an excursion to buy a puzzle for my sign-in page and couldn't find one. To be really honest I only went to one store, WM, but since they have everything you would think it couldn't be difficult. It was after 9 so all the other stores were closed, but who would have thought it would be so difficult to find a little puzzle?!?!?

The wonderful girls on SJ are all busy trying to find me one. They are the best!!!!! Yes, I have 3 weeks left but what if I run into some other problems. I have to make every minute count on this. Lori is already done with hers and is mailing it - No pressure there. LOL

So anyway, I'm going to be doing my CJ on Summer. Anything about summer. It should be bright and cheery when it comes back. I love summer, it's my favorite season. I love the heat, sun, vacations, days off, picnics. Mike hates it, he don't like to be hot, how did we ever hook up again?!!? I still have to decide on what picture I want to use. It will be 8x8, so it shouldn't be too hard and go pretty quickly.

I love making words different colors.

I'll leave you with one LO. It turned out how I saw it in my head, how often does that happen? The tag lifts up for some journaling. This is Austen last year on Halloween. The kids go to a Christian school, so they had to dress up as someone from their favorite time in history. Yea, well, I don't think they have a favorite time in history so we found what WM had cheap and made it work. LOL I didn't put a mustache on him, I actually didn't think about it till I was on my way to work. He was happy with it so that's all that matters. I still have to do a LO with Nathen and his Knight costume.

Thanks for stayin' with me and my ramblings.

And now...I'll bid you Adieu.

As Promised...

2006-05-23T09:43:00.000-05:00

Here are my latest works of art. LOL They are all from the Florida (except for the Tag). Before I go on, let me just say that I always thought I was an "EVENT" scrapper. You know throw all your pictures from one event on one page, journal about it and you're done. Well, I'm so not seeing that happen in my stuff lately. I am liking my new thang though. It creates a lot of freedom in my scrapping.

If you are curious about supplies, ask. Otherwise, I'm not going to posting that on here. The first 2 are 8x8 and will go on my wall. The "Oceanside" one is a 12x12, 2-page spread.

I tried my hand at some doodling. VERY VERY LITTLE DOODLING. I am sooo scared that I will mess up the LO and, sure enough, I did. I hate it but didn't want to redo it. So I tried covering it up as best as I could.

Austen drew this in the sand in Cocoa Beach. Little sweetie. I bought a $5.00 package of stickers for the one that says "Sand Art" cause I knew I had to have it for this picture. I know the term "sand art" usually brings to mind castles in the sand but this was my Baby's art! I'm sure I'll use the other stickers. We're going back this year...

Last beach one...for now. LOL First of all, yes the large pic on the left was staged. Everyone thought I was nuts but they did it anyway. I LOVE IT!!! Under that pic is some journaling about the problems I had getting everyone to do this little photo shoot. I bought the transparency and cut it up. That was a hard decision to make - I kept thinking what if I didn't like it cut that way. But I like how it turned out.

And finally...the tag. Basic Grey Color Me Silly Frogs.

This was so fun to make.

I have a couple more to post, but I'll save that for another day. Even though one is another beach LO - consider yourself warned. LOL

Buh-Bye

My weekend

2006-05-22T09:34:00.000-05:00

First off, I want to say thanks to my two commenting friends. Yea, someone is reading my blog, LOL, and Denise even copied me. True, she said she had nothing better to do, but a copy is still a copy.

I'm ssooooo very tired today. I want my weekend to last as long as possible so I stay up as late as I can, which was 2:00 both Friday and Saturday nights. I'm gonna pay today. I could hardly keep my eyes open on the Metro on the way to work.

We had a very busy weekend.
Friday night we went to Allyson's graduation party. As I was getting ready to go, I got to thinking that R&W had been living in their house for over a year and I had never been there since they moved in. They have had things/parties at their house, but I had not been to any of them. Just a random strange thought. Allyson likes frogs so I made her a cool card with a Basic Grey Color Me Silly frog tag. It turned out totally cool. I'll upload later, I haven't downloaded the pics to the 'puter yet.

Saturday was a golf tournament. This had been rescheduled from April, due to a rain-out. We lost a lot of teams because of prior committments so it wasn't as big as it was in April. We had 11 teams originally and it was cut in half. Turns out it was a good thing for the golf course, they had 2 huge tournaments that day, so they were swamped. At one point, they had about 100 golfers on the course. He said they could technically accommodate about 120 but it would really slow things down. It ended up misting rain a couple times but it didn't stop our guys. I figured they didn't need any more drinks (I was the water girl) since it had cooled off so I went to Archivers and spent a little cash.

Got some cool paper for some LO's I was working on. My main reason for going though was to get some Bazzill. I am sooo not a name brand paper snob. I like all kinds of stuff and I'll buy it if I like it, I don't care what the brand name is. Well, for some reason I had this thing against Bazzill, I guess I figured all plain cardstock was the same. Boy was I wrong. I got a few sheets in some of the kits I ordered from The Memory Safe and I've decided there's nothing quite like a good, solid piece of Bazzill CS. N-E-ways, I had to get some coordinating colors for some PP I had and ended up with a pile of it. Woo Hoo for me.

Sunday was church and we had our SFC kickoff. It went really well if you didn't know how the schedule was lined up. If you knew what was supposed to happen you would think it was a disaster (this was my opinion). But we totally wanted God to be in charge and our schedule was a tentative outline for Him and He chose not to follow it. So - the bottom line is it went good. Cause that's what God would say, "and God said it was good." ::firm nod::

In the middle of all this, mostly after 10:00 p.m., I did some scrapbooking. Got a couple Florida things done that I'm really liking. I haven't taken pictures of them yet, so I'll do that and then upload several things tomorrow.

I'll leave you with another of Mike's famous pictures...he calls this one "Half-Done."

Um, yea, well ok, anyway, looks all done to me.

That's all for now. Thanks for hanging out. ~Cya.

For Mike - luv ya babe! <3 <3 <3

2006-05-18T15:58:00.000-05:00

Yes, well ok. These aren't my normal uploads as you can tell. I was showing Mike my blog the other day and we were navigating through everyone that I "stalk" and when we got to Kayla he kind of got offended. Not at Kayla, but at my thoughts on his photos. He gets my camera and you never know what will show up. So the other day he took the camera out and this is what I got. He informed me that they were every bit as good as some of the other stuff he had seen classified as "art." So here Baby, this is for you...
I have one of those yard windmills. It's pretty cool. He got a great perspective of the moon on this one. I guess he laid down on the ground.

I would have to guess that this is his favorite. He loves how the glass looks like it magnified. That's how I feel about our power bill. MAGNIFIED!!!!!!!!!

I waited all day to post to my blog cause I usually find something to say after I've posted. Wouldn't you know, today is not that kind of day. I guess I'll leave you with one more. This is a LO for a CJ I'm in. We were to scrap our scrapping space. I copied this for my own book but got even messier on it than this one. Is that even possible?!?!?!?! I'm a make a mess when I scrap but clean up between each LO. Weird huh?

That's all for today. If you are readin' let me know.

My recent cards and other random stuff...

2006-05-16T12:03:00.000-05:00

An Anniversary Card - Used Stampin Up stuff on it. I think it turned out pretty neat. Kind of busy, but that's my style...for now, at least.

A Birthday Card ~ I had bought some Rob & Bob file folders on clearance at Archivers and couldn't bear to part with them, so I traced one and made my own. Yes, I hoard stuff. ;-) I am totally loving the Heidi Swapp ghost flowers too.

The next one is a card I made for Chelle for her open house. I used an extra long piece of CS so I could fold it up and make a pocket for some gift certificates. This one has some Rob and Bob and Christina Cole paper. I love how it turned out ~ I felt sort of bad showing up at an open house and not taking something for her roomie, but I don't know her and I really only wanted to give to my cousin. So I gave my card to her in private. I guess the people that were there thought we were flakes cause Ididn't walk in with a present.

I have more to post but I'll save them for tomorrow, just in case I don't know what to post. I am really getting more comfortable with my messy style. I used to not want to show my friends cause they just don't "get" it. Course, this is why: The anniversary card didn't get anything but "thank you" without even a wow in the voice or anything. It really does look cool IRL, and she's a scrapper. Oh well, DH liked it and said so.

Now on to the stuff of today...

I absolutely HATE the weather right now. It is raining for like the third week in a row. Yes, I said WEEK. It has rained every day for what seems like weeks and weeks, and I don't think that is too much of an exaggeration cause it's been at least 2 if not 3. I am sooo ready for summer, I can't wait to go to Florida. Mike is supposed to play softball tonight, might be more like mud ball. YUCK, he will have to take the truck so he don't get the van dirty.

My co-worker is a crab today. OH JOY! Make for a fun day. Seems like she's mad at the world. She is talking to me -- but barely. Makes for a long 9 hours. I think she has a problem with the amount of work she has to do and the amount of work I have to do. The problem is, when she started working here she began taking over jobs that I was to do. Now she don't like it that she seems to to EVERYTHING. Well, excuse me, but she wants to look like she's all important, guess you could say she has a real high opinion of her worth. Sheesh. Here's one for ya: She hasn't taken a real vacation probably since here first year here. Now she says things to me like "what if I took my vacation like you did?", "what would you all do?", "who would write checks?", "good thing I'm not planning a vacation." Ok, get over yourself!!!!!!!! I taught her that dang computer and some of the check program too. She is forever asking how to do one thing or another - over and over again. Then she brags at how you only have to tell her once and she has it, blah, blah, blah. So, I say, Take your stupid vacation. I don't care. I can handle it. She acts like I'm totally incapable of doing anything here in the office. GRRRRR!!!!!!! Ok, that's off my chest now, maybe I can be ok for a while.

If you're still reading - if anyone is reading - thanks for hanging in there.

Thoughts from the weekend

2006-05-15T08:53:00.000-05:00

Monday's are so hard. I would absolutely LOVE to be able to work Tuesday - Friday, 10 hours a day. That would be sweet!!!! But I doubt the bosses would go for that idea.

I am truly about done with this weather. We've had about 2 weeks of nothing but rain, rain, rain. The past week has been cold too - down in the 40's and the highs barely reach the 60's. As I was walking in to work last week, it felt like October weather. It was cold and rainy and you could hear the wind blowing in the trees. It sent a winter chill down my spine. It feels like we had winter, spring, 3 days of summer, back to fall. YUCK!!! I really can't wait for summer. From what I understand it's supposed to hit about 90 by the end of the week. It's in the mid 50's today. Good Grief!

Mother's Day was kind of funny. I totally forgot to get my mom a card. Bad, bad daughter. So Sunday morning I wake Mike up and tell him we have to go to Walgreen's on the way to church so that I could get her a card. Come to find out, he had to get me one too. We had already talked about my gift. I told him I wanted to get him something for Father's Day but the whole family would benefit from it. A cool BBQ grill. He's fine with that but says, "Do you want to just get it in a combined Mother's Day/Father's Day thing?" I'm totally cool with that cause we're talking a couple hundred smackers. In the meantime though, he graciously decided to get me some Hershey's cookies which, when we got into the van, they all proceded to munch on on the way to church. Silly guys. It was a good day though. I totally love my kids. Saturday morning, Nick gave me a random hug and told me Happy Mother's Day. I don't get those hugs very often from him anymore and it was so sweet of him. The twins made me cards and gave me flowers in cool pots from both school and Sunday School. If it will ever stop raining, I'll plant them in my flower garden. If you could only see my flower garden - all weeds and one beautiful, blooming Clematis plant. Guess these 4 flowers will help.

**************************************

I accepted a RAK Girls Challenge to send a random card to a fellow Jazzer but I forgot to take a picture of it. I thought I would remember what I did. Terry was so sweet to post a picture for me on Scrapjazz so I could put it on my computer at home. I thought it was kind of funny when I saw it though. I knew I used the purple flower and the fishing lure thing, but I couldn't, for the life of me, remember how it all went together. So when I saw it, it was like looking at something new. I think it looked better IRL though.

This weekend was a whirlwind, but that's seems to be the story of my life. I was able to get some more rolodex cards done for the people that asked for them on SJ. I stayed up till 2:00 catching up on rolodex cards and my challenge scrapping - Tags this time. They turned out really neat and I didn't really want to send them out. I still have one for WendyPants, since I can't find her address, I may get to keep it. Just kidding. I'll probably send it out to someone else. I did take pics so I'll post them on here later. I keep forgetting to post pics though. Hopefully I'll remember tonight.

A "How To"

2006-05-10T14:13:00.000-05:00

from the wonderful Ms. Lindsay Teague. I'm actually posting it here so I can remember how to do it.

1. Register for an account (if you don't already have one) at flickr.
2. Once registered, sign into your account and you will be brought to your flickr homepage.
3. Now you need to acquire the pictures you want in your photo mosaic...for the one above, I used purple as my theme. There are lots of options here...so just do what you like! To do this, you'll need to search through the flickr photo database. Go to the bottom of your home page for the "Photo Search" option under the "Explore" category. Click "Photo Search."
4. Now this page will come up where you'll type your keyword or search word into the serch option on the right that says "search titles, tags and descriptions. Then Click "search."
5. Then pages of pictures will come up with pictures that match your description (some better than others).
6. Now scroll through the pictures until you find one that is of interest to you. Once you find one click on the picture and a new page will open up with that picture on it.
7. If you like the picture and would like to include it in your mosaic, click the "Add to Faves" icon above the picture to the left side. It will turn that empty star to pink to show you that it has been added to your favorites.
8. Now go back to your list of pictures and continue to scroll through until you find your desired amount of pictures and make them all favorites (please note that the max amount of pictures for one mosic is 36).
9. You can periodically check the amount of pictures you have in your favorites by scrolling down to the bottom of the page and clicking "Your Favorites" under the "Your Photos" heading.
10. This will bring you to your favorites page where you can take a closer look at the photos you've chosen.
11. When you have got all the photos you want in your favorites, it's time to turn them into a mosaic. Open up a new web browsing window and go to http://flagrantdisregard.com/flickr/mosaic.php
12. Now enter in the options that work best for your mosaic by changing the layout (when you click on different layouts, it will show you an example to the right), changing the amount of pictures in your mosaic, changing the tile size ( I usually go with medium), and changing the background colors.
13. Select "Flickr Favorites" from the "choose how you would like to select images" options.
14. Enter your flickr screen name into the box below.
15. Now Click "Create Mosaic"
16. This "Please Wait" page will come up and it could take up to 30 seconds...just be patient.
17. If all is done correctly, your mosaic should appear in large form, like this:
18. Now right-click on the mosaic and save it to the appropriate place on your computer...and, voila...DONE!

UPDATE:
I wanted to say these directions are perfect. Lindsey is amazing at teaching. I haven't uploaded what I created to my blog yet since I'm wanting to have a totally cool mosaic and am still considering my choices.

Tuesday's Challenge:

2006-05-09T13:17:00.000-05:00

If you had to join a witness protection program with your family, where would you wanna live???

I would love to move somewhere that has a lot of water and beaches that are made for lounging. I want the weather to be warm most of the time, but NEVER humid. The nights can cool off – but not too cool, KWIM? An Island would be nice. I would also like to try out Mexico. And just for DH’s benefit, I would be ok with experiencing Europe for a bit but nothing long term.
If I had to pick somewhere in the states, I would do Arizona, Cali, Maine, Florida and Hawaii (that’s in the states isn’t it?).

I want to start uploading more of my completed LO's here since I have a dickens of a time getting the loaded at SJ. Here's a familiar photo from Florida that I made sepia toned and did this LO for a CJ I'm in on SJ. The theme was LOVE. This is love to me ~ my guys. I'm sooo loving how this turned out. The only thing I would change is my lettering but I dont' know what I would change it to since I'm working on the exact same LO only in 12x12 for my own scrapbook. I am still stumped what to put there.

I love bulk - even though none of my non-SJ-pals who scrap understand it. It looks a little heavy but the flower is really light.

I got this kit from Memory Safe. I love their kits. I want to buy some more, but I think I should hold off for a bit and see how our vacation plans start working out. LOL

Ok, well that's all I'm going to say to myself for now.

In the near future,

2006-05-09T13:08:00.000-05:00

when I'm stumped on what to blog about AND I have my ipod available (that's the key here), I'm going to do this challenge. Sounds fun.

EDITED TO SAY I DID IT AND ADD THE SONGS. JUST FOR THE RECORD, I DIDN'T EVEN LOOK AT THE LIST AS I WAS DOING THIS. I TYPED THE LIST UP IN MS WORD AND NUMBERED EACH ONE, THEN CAME OVER HERE AND TYPED THEM UP. IT'S PRETTY AMAZING HOW SOME OF THEM TURNED OUT. COINCIDENCE? HMMM, MAKES YOU WONDER.

The Song of my life
Instructions:
• Put your music player on shuffle.
• Press forward for each question.
• Use the song title as the answer to the question, even if it doesn't make any sense.

1. How am I feeling today? IT HAD TO BE YOU - HARRY CONNICK JR
2. Will I get far in life? MAYBE NOT TONIGHT - SAMMY KERSHAW
3. How do my friends see me? MR. MOM - LONESTAR
4. Where will I get married? OVER THE RAINBOW - HARRY CONNICK JR.
5. What is my best friend? YOU ARE - (SONG FROM MY MUSIC DIRECTOR)
6. What is the story of my life? YOU'RE WORTHY OF MY PRAISE - JEREMY CAMP
7. What was high school like? HE'S GOD - BROOKLYN TAB
8. How can I get ahead in life? REMEMBER JESUS - JOE PACE
9. What is the best thing about me? HEART'S WOUNDS - (BACH)
10. What is today going to be like? PEOPLE WILL SAY WE'RE IN LOVE - LENA HORNE
11. What is in store for this weekend? CORAZON ESPINADO - SANTANA
12. What song describes my parents? GREAT IS THY FAITHFULNESS - CECE WINANS
13. To describe my grandparents? ANCIENT OF DAYS - PETRA
14. How is my life going? DON'T TAKE THE GIRL - TIM MCGRAW
15. What song will they play at my funeral? ARMS LENGTH AWAY - SAMMY KERSHAW
16. How does the world see me? TAKE ME WITH YOU - PRINCE
17. Will I have a happy life? GOD'S PROMISE - LUTHER BARNES
18. What do my friends really think of me? GEE BABY, AIN'T I GOOD TO YOU - DR JOHN
19. Do people secretly lust after me? JESUS IS ALL - FRED HAMMOND
20. How can I make myself happy? I WANT TO KNO HIM - LAUREN TALLEY
21. What should I do with my life? LORD REIGN IN ME - (WOW CD)
22. Will I ever have children? SHADOW OF THE CROSS - RUSS TAFF
23. What is some good advice for me? LOVE ALL THE HURT AWAY - GARY OLIVER
24. How will I be remembered? THE LOVE OF GOD - GAITHERS
25. What is my signature dancing song? WHERE IT'S ALWAYS BEEN - PHILLIPS, CRAID & DEAN
26. What is my current theme song? POWER - YOUTH ON MISSIONS
27. What does everyone else think my current theme song is? I ONLY HAVE EYES FOR YOU - HARRY CONNICK JR.

MONDAY

2006-05-08T14:38:00.001-05:00

Thanks to Beth at SJ for the daily blog challenges. It's definitely making this blog more interesting. LOL

Today's challenge is to list something I would like to change about myself, but it cannot be a physical feature. I think I would like to be more outgoing and sure of myself (self-confidence). I am so unsure of myself and uncomfortable in most social settings. I think I come across as a snob, but in reality I am just very backward and shy. Once I get to know you, then I'm mostly generally ok, but it's hard at first. Being comfortable in my own skin would be really nice.
+++++++++++++

I read this on someone else's blog from SJ (Kristi or Christina ~ not sure whose):

Does anyone else ever get the urge to move away when things aren't going your
way?? Sometimes its nice to dream about making a change, starting over.

I wanted to record my thoughts about this...I do wish this - - A LOT!!!!!!!!!!! I would really love to leave my job and move on to a different one. If we were financially able, I would be a stay at home mom and be really involved in the kids' school. But since that isn't realistic, I just want to work closer to home. I feel underappreciated by my boss. As of my last raise (last year) my salary is supposedly capped, so what exactly is there to look forward to? I think it would be great to up and move totally out of state and out of the area. The only downside is, Mike's Dad and my Mom would have to come along. I couldn't bear to leave either of them here. Well, I'm sure there's more "downsides" than that one, but that's the biggie.

Ok, and here's another blogging challenge from another blog I thought would be fun to do:

This week's blogging challenge: A quickie! List ten food cravings that you easily cave in to! If there was one offered, you’d never turn it down. Share any thoughts on these.

1) Chocolate. I love Chocolate and it's a rare occasion when I turn it down.
2) Ice Cold Diet Coke
3) Pasta
4) Mashed Potatos ~ no gravy, just butter. Lumpy is even more of a temptation.
5) Chips
6) Ice Cream
7) Coconut Cream Pie
8) Peanut M&M's/Peanut Butter Cups (there's the chocolate?)
9) Funnel Cake
10) Dumplings (you can leave out the chicken, just give me the dumplings baby!)

Looking at the list I guess I do have the will power to turn them down (cause I have in the past) but I just choose NOT to. Who could blame me?!!!

Ok, that's quite an entry for today. Gonna get back to work.

What is Beauty?

2006-05-05T08:59:00.000-05:00

The blog question for today is: What do I find beauty in that others may not see?

The first thing that came to my mind was Oil on pavement. A lot of people don't think of it as beauty since it's a stain on their driveway or on the road. If you look though, and I know you have, you can see a beautiful rainbow. Rainbows, no matter where they are, bring "GOD'S PROMISES" to my mind. I am very thankful for His promises to me.

Austen used to call the heat radiating from the pavement "____ water." (Wish I could remember. I left it blank so I could think about it though.) You can see it when driving along on a hot summer day with flat road stretching out in front of you. He enjoys looking for it and he thinks it's pretty.

Psalm 8
1 O LORD, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! who hast set thy glory above the heavens.
3 When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained;
9 O LORD our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

On another note, nobody likes to be told negative things - especially from someone who has a lot of negative attributes. So someone told me today that I can't sing. I believe I can and have been told by others that I can. This person told me today I have a church voice, not a disco voice. (Same person told me a few minutes before that I couldn't whistle either.) Ok, so I was singing in the office trying to be relatively quiet, but come on.... She kept trying to explain herself, but in my opinion just kept digging a bigger hole with her foot in her mouth. Then she would say "You know what I mean?" I finally told her "no, I don't." Cause at "my church we don't sing songs that you might hear in church, like the Ave Maria." It really hurt my feelings. Guess I'll just consider the source.

Ok vent off.

Down Memory Lane...

2006-05-04T16:21:00.000-05:00

Today we are supposed to write about our first job, so here goes:

My first job I watiressed at a Greek Restaurant. I started working there when I was 15. I don't even know if the place had a name or not, it's been so long that I can't remember, we just always called it "The Greek Restaurant." The owner's name was Paul Panagapalis (I have no idea how to spell that) and he had the worst temper I had ever seen. I remember one day going to work and the place was closed. Come to find out he had gotten mad at his wife and destroyed the insides. He ripped the thermostat out of the wall and broke various other things. I only worked there for about a year cause one day I got word not to go back in. The government had deported him back to Greece.

What a guy.

He made THE BEST food though. I loved the Baklava and the Gyros. Wonderful!!!!!!!

SPRING...

2006-05-01T11:32:00.000-05:00

I've been challenged to write about it.

First of all, let me just say "It's here!!!! WOO HOO!!!!" I love spring.

I love the flowers and trees, the sunshine, people out walking and riding bikes, motorcycles, the pool, vacation, warm weather, green grass, flip flops.

Not so much the spring rain, but I know that I have to have the rain to get some of the gorgeous flowers.

SCRAPBOOK RETREAT

2006-04-25T12:03:00.000-05:00

YEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!! I am so excited. I can't wait for Friday. I will be gone from Friday to Sunday evening at a scrapbook retreat. I have been looking forward to this all month. I think it's the only thing that helped me get through the craziness that's been going on. I'm almost there ---

I ordered some pictures last night and have to get them tonight after work. So I'll be loaded up on photos. I just have to organize the paper, ribbon and embellishments I'm taking, oh yeah and stamps and albums, gosh will I have room for clothes???? My goal is to kind of get LO's together so that I can really get some stuff done this week. I know it's probably a lofty goal but I'm gonna try. I already have 2 ready, one with valentines and one of Xander. The one of Xander is gonna be cool I'm gonna use green and purple. I have a huge purple flower to put on there it's gonna look cool.

I am a little concerned about the weather. It was beautiful here yesterday and today it's FREEZING COLD. I hope it is nice this weekend. In addition to getting scrap time we also get to use the facilities at the lodge so I hope to spend a little time outside too. According to Weather.com it looks like it might be rainy and in the upper 60's - but who can tell how accurate a 5-day forcast is?!!!

Ok, I'm off to browse SJ. I don't think I'll have internet access while at the Lodge and I want to be ready with ideas to get some LO's done.

How about another movie review...

2005-11-18T15:12:00.000-06:00

MONSTER-IN-LAW:

Totally funny movie.
My favorite character was Ruby (Wanda Sykes). She had some realy great lines.

Random Thoughts From The Queen of Scrap

Goin' out in a blaze of glory....

This may be my final post here...

The Last Working Day Before Christmas

Altered Puzzle

Christmas Carols for the Psychologically Challenged

Brief Thursday 13

Happy Holidays!!!!

A little update...

Walkin' In A Winter Wonderland

YEA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Photos

Cooking Your Thanksgiving Turkey

Cryptic blog post

A Lame Thursday 13...

Number Crunching

Thursday 13, #6

Trick or Treat!!!!

{The Weekend}

{TT 13 - Edition #5}

***Big Sigh***

I've been a bad blogger this week

Thursday 13 {on Friday the 13th}

Happy Wednesday!!

Report From The Weekend

Blah...

Tursday 13

Mark Your Calendars...

ACK!!! I've been tagged.

Just Another Manic Monday

Friday Is The Day We Do The Happy Dance...

Thursday Thirteen

Challenges

T.G.I.F.

Praise God!!!!

Tuesday's Blog

Veggie Tales

13 Totally Random Thoughts

WARNING -

~ 9/11/01 ~

Love Your Handwriting?

Brag Book...

T.G.I.F. Baby!!!!

Guess what I got????

*more randomness*

Boring Blog

Have your ever found a dead body?

A Few Pictures...

summerjazz CJ's

Gracie...

It's Friday...

Postsecret

GGGRRRRR.......BLOGGER

Not so great photos this time around...

Checkin' in from Florida

PSA Hot Glue Gun - UPDATE

PSA regarding Hot Glue

Nutin' but Thankful

I am such an idiot!!!!!!!!

Sad but true...

AWOL

TGIF

MY BABIES ARE GONNA BE 10 :-O :-O

HEY HEY HEY ~

Elizabeth Grace

Wednesday's blog..

LOST:

Today...

Randomness

Imaginary Header

Father's Day...

Refreshed

FINALLY....

It's been a long day...

Oops....I missed Monday

T.G.I.F.

The winds of change...

Christmas in MAY

Skipping Monday

Tagged...

Big Sigh

more randomness